QUESTION: I need to teach tolerance as a Jewish value. What Jewish texts can I use?

ANSWER:

Part One: A Synthesis of Jewish teachings of tolerance.

For the purposes of this answer, I will assume that the questioner is envisioning teaching in settings where the primary Hebrew sources need to be available in English translation and the secondary sources will be in English. If in fact there is need for other languages (Russian for recent immigrants, etc.), that can be handled in a follow-up question. I have confined my primary source citations to the most common and widely available texts, i.e. the Bible and the Talmud.

Tolerance is a key Jewish value—although, given the high degree of polarization of Jewish opinion in both Israel and the USA, tracking the liberal vs. conservative debate that is at the heart of western political life, this claim is perhaps more challenged today than in recent times. Nonetheless, Jews ought to resist having our own tradition’s clear teachings hijacked by the compartmentalization of topics that characterizes, each in its own way, both liberalism and conservatism. Judaism has insights claimed by each camp. Tolerance belongs in both.

The Jewish notion of tolerance is rooted in the basic Jewish understanding of the relationship each of us has with the Other. Ever since Adam and Eve, the process of human development, as portrayed in Judaism, involves learning to live with the Other. Our first book, Genesis, depicts one strained relationship after another, until Joseph, at the end of the book (Genesis chapter 50) expresses the heart of the matter: we do not stand in the place of God, and therefore, we must be forgiving.

Tolerance of the Other is actually about tolerance of differences. This is the essence of the matter, because precisely by virtue of being different, the “Other” poses challenges to the “Self”.

The Hebrew value concept encompassing this is “kevod ha-b’riyot”, meaning “The honor of the Other.” The word for the Other literally means “[God’s] creations”. This phrase underscores the Jewish understanding that all people are children of God. As Rabbi Akiva phrased it, “Beloved is the human, for the human is created in God’s image.” (Pirke Avot 3:14).

Clearly, the chain of Jewish sources, both Biblical and Rabbinic, expressing the religion’s exhortation to Jews to obey the “Golden Rule”, is also appropriate to this discussion. Leviticus 19: 18, “v’ahavta l’reakha kamokha—love your neighbor as yourself” is the base text for this value. One of the founding fathers of the Rabbinic movement, Hillel, couched it as “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor”. H e also expressed the fundamental obligation to balance self-respect with responsibility to others: If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And when I am for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?” (Pirkei Avot 1:14).

Within the broadest category of the “Other”, there are those concerning whom our tradition especially preaches and commands tolerance:

One such group in need of—and receiving—the protection of the halakhah (the system of Jewish law) consists of people whose physical and mental abilities are different from most others’. In the Talmud, Tractate Berakhot 58b, the Rabbis formulated a benediction to be recited upon seeing a differently-abled person, “Barukh ata… meshaneh et ha-b’riyot: Blessed are You, LORD… who makes people different.”

This rabbinic celebration of physical and mental diversity, in turn, rests upon the Biblical insistence that everyone is created in God’s image, as mentioned above: See Genesis 1:26-27. The Bible itself translates that insight from the realm of narrative into the realm of law, by prohibiting various actions that would harm the disabled either physically or in reputation: Leviticus 19:14: “Do not curse a deaf person, and do not place a stumbling block before a blind person; Fear your God.”

It follows that the worth of an individual is not limited to that person’s economic or social utility. We are commanded to be tolerant, regardless of whether the Other can be useful to us, because that is an essential part of our understanding of what it means to be human.

Hence, the Jewish description of deeds of loving kindness performed on behalf of the dying or the dead as “hesed shel emet-- true deeds of loving kindness”; true, in the sense of being wholly altruistic and therefore undiminished by an expectation of reciprocity. This phrase is first attested in Genesis 47:29, when Jacob uses it to describe the request he makes of his son Joseph, to see to it that Jacob will be buried not in Egypt, but back home, in the Promised Land.

The halakhah also specifies instances where people are at risk of harming each other because of their different histories:

Classically, Jewish texts teaching tolerance are often presented as mitzvoth (commandments) concerning social and economic interactions. For example, the Jewish insistence that tolerance of others overrides narrow economic self-interest finds abundant expression in rabbinic laws about the ethical conduct of commerce. Mishnah Bava Metsia’ chapter 4 is an elaborate discussion of the concept of “’ona’ah”, “oppression”. For example, it is oppressive for the shopkeeper to take advantage of the gullibility of children.

In that chapter, the Rabbis themselves extend their legal development of the prohibition against “oppression” to include verbal, as well as commercial, manifestations. One is not allowed to remind a penitent of his former, sinful ways, nor a convert of his immoral conduct prior to his embrace of Judaism. (To be sure, that last prohibition reflects its times. Today’s converts would surely not all be presumed to have lived immoral lives prior to their becoming Jewish.) Again, in their commentary to the conclusion of Psalm 104, “yitammu chata’im min ha-‘aretz” (“Let sin disappear from the land”), the Rabbis emphasize: “sin”, and not “the sinner”. The import of this is to welcome the person whose past behavior had violated the norms of our tradition, but who is now penitent. This, in turn, is connected to the theme of tolerance because it concretizes the value of suspending negative judgment on the Other.

In recent years, our society has focused increasingly on those whose sexual orientation is not fully expressed by traditional categories. The discussion has lamentably become a political wedge issue.

In adapting pre-modern Jewish sources for this contemporary discussion, it is important to remember first principles. One may read the classical halakhah and find various discussions in which the tumtum and the androginus (two categories of people whose sexual characteristics were either undeveloped or androgynous) were treated differently than males and females; but the overarching ethical reality is that all people are the Other whom we are bidden to love and respect.

In the Conservative/Masorti denomination, discussions of gender differences and sexual orientation have progressed from the 1970’s, when the Rabbinical Assembly passed resolutions calling for the protection of the unabridged civil rights of homosexuals, to more recent resolutions, halakhic responsa and liturgies embodiment a greater degree of respect for and even celebration of our human diversity.

The Torah devotes much attention to enjoining tolerance of those belonging to groups other than Judaism. The commandment to “love the ger” (resident alien, living in the midst of Jewish society) is a leitmotif of the Biblical law codes.

Moving from Biblical texts, reflecting a model of a majority-Jewish society, to Rabbinics, reflecting the historical reality of Jews living as a minority within larger societies, we see a development of the theme of tolerance in Jewish-Gentile relations. Broadly speaking, Rabbinic Judaism develops two arguments in favor of tolerance of the non-Jew: first, our common humanity, and second, the need for Jews to seek peace by means of deeds of kindness to all.

The first argument: The Jewish people is one branch of the human family, a family that, following Biblical narrative, is envisioned by the Rabbis as proceeding from Adam and Eve, our universal parents. In a Rabbinic discussion concerned that witnesses not wrongly testify against defendants in capital cases, the judges are instructed to remind the witnesses of the narrative of Adam and Eve. In that discourse, the focus is on the ethical implications of asserting that humans are all descended from common ancestors, and therefore, that no one can say, “my blood is redder than yours”. We are all one human family, and therefore, no one can claim to be a superior breed of human to other groups (Mishnah Sanhedrin, chapter 4).

The second argument: The Rabbis codified a number of deeds of loving-kindness that Jews are expected to perform on behalf of Gentiles, as part of our commitment to darkhei shalom, the “paths of peace.” For example, Jews are bidden to visit the sick of the other nations, help in burying their dead, and so on.

Finally, in the Jewish vision of y’mot ha-mashiach, the ideal future traditionally terms “the days of the Messiah”, tolerance replaces the fratricide of current-day inter-group relations. The prophet Isaiah expressed it in stirring terms: “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war any more.” (Isa. 2:4) Thus, the broad tradition of Jewish teachings about the high importance of achieving and maintaining peace is also a resource for the teacher, looking to show students our texts on tolerance.

Part Two:

A SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SECONDARY WORKS DEALING WITH THE JEWISH ARTICULATION OF THE VALUE OF TOLERANCE

1. General and Encyclopedic Treatments of Jewish Ethics, including topics dealing with tolerance:

Dorff, Elliot N. The Way into Tikkun Olam (Repairing the World). Jewish Lights, 2005. See especially the concluding section, “Forward”, articulating a vision of how tolerance helps actualize a repaired world.

Judaism teaches modesty and sexual self-discipline, so it would be quite straightforward to frame an answer to this question that mandates separating the guests. Nonetheless, I do not believe that such an answer is the correct one for all the situations that are grouped together within the broad wording of the question. To explain this, a bit of historical analysis is necessary:

Our most classical sources speak of a man seducing a virgin (woman), not herself betrothed to be married, and then, as a penalty, being required to pay a full dowry and to marry her (if she will consent to be his wife) (Exodus 22:15). It is noteworthy that the Bible treats the sexual intimacy from the standpoint of financial loss to the father of the bride. Presumably, the dowry for a virgin was higher than the dowry for a non-virgin. This is very different from the case of rape, which the Bible treats as a capital offense (Deuteronomy 22:25-26).

In Rabbinic times, we see evidence of a development in the legal status of the (adult) woman. Rather than her father receiving dowry money in exchange for her hand, she herself receives the ketubah upon marriage. (The ketubah contains several financial pledges that she can collect should she be divorced or widowed.) If an adult woman has been seduced, according to the Rabbis, she receives compensation from the seducer for “disgrace and deterioration” (Mishnah Ketubot 3:4).

From this brief overview, we ought to recognize that both the Biblical and the Rabbinic strata of our tradition operated in a society where the virgin status of a bride was both socially preferred and economically quantifiable. Now, there are some Jewish circles where that preference is still the case, but by and large, the attitude that the loss of her virginity constitutes "disgrace and deterioration" is not operative in the part of the Jewish community that affiliates with the several non-Orthodox denominations of today’s Jewish world. There is also a generational divide in attitudes towards pre-marital sexual intimacy, with Jews who came of age during and after the social revolutions of the late 1960’s and 1970’s holding different views from the (now, senior) generation.

Therefore: if the traditional penalties—and the disapproval on which those penalties are founded—stem from a social attitude that is no longer felt, and if the sources themselves treat the behavior as a matter of financial loss rather than a capital case, is not the question ready for a fresh examination? That is why the most straightforward answer is not the correct one for all situations.

Turning to the realm of positive guidance: I believe there are two intersecting parameters that would inform the specific answer to be given to this question:

1)The relationship of the host to the guests;

2)The relationship of the guests to each other.

1) In certain areas of life, the hosts set the rules of their households, and guests are expected to abide by them, regardless of their relationship. Hosts are competent to lay down the rule that guests will not smoke inside their houses; that guests will not bring non-kosher food into their homes, and the like. That is because those actions can harm the hosts directly. This argument does not, however, cover the situation of refusing to let unmarried guests share a bedroom, because bedrooms are not the public areas of the house.

The question does not specify the relationship of the hosts to the guests, but it may be that the hosts are parents (or grandparents, etc.) of one of the guests. In this instance, there is the added issue of the duty to provide moral instruction to one’s children. But here, too, there is a sliding scale. A wise parent will invoke the “rules of the house” more sparingly with grown children than with teens.

2) It is important to understand the relationship of the unmarried guests to each other. Are they a couple, already building a life together in their own home, visiting the parents of one of them? It borders on the foolish to tell an adult couple, already committed to each other, to suspend that commitment because they are guests in one’s home. One could, of course, say to them that they ought to stay in a motel, but it is likely that the end result of that stricture would be a strain on the bond that the parents-hosts would like to strengthen.

The Jewish ideal setting for physical intimacy is kiddushin, the marriage relationship. But the ideal may not be the only way in which consecration to one’s partner can be lived out. Within the sector of the Jewish community which I serve, it is quite common to see couples who, for various and understandable reasons, have avoided formal marriage, but who build their lives together on the basis of fidelity, caring, and certainly love. It is not hard to see the holiness in their relationship, even while hoping, at some level, that they would see fit to declare their relationship in the most formal of rituals.

On the other hand, if the guests are not in a committed relationship, then the traditional Jewish disapproval of promiscuity reappears with greater weight. Parents are not obliged to give tacit approval to “hook-up culture”.

I would recommend to the questioner the book by my colleague, Rabbi Michael Gold, Does God Belong in the Bedroom? Rabbi Gold defends the right of the parents to set the standards of behavior for their homes (p. 70) more broadly than I have, in my response, but I value his central image of “the ladder of holiness”, and I would apply that image to this question. If the partners wishing to share the bedroom in one’s house are striving to make their physical relationship part of a life of holiness, then they can be considered to have climbed "several rungs of the ladder", and in such case, I would counsel not choosing to make their stay a battleground.

One more point seems appropriate to add: if the hosts are happily married, or if the sole host was happily married at a former time, then the varied interactions between host and guests may give opportunities to guide unmarried guests to an affirmation of marriage by persuasive, not coercive, means. Hosts are well advised to remain alert for such opportunities to show their values in a positive way.

Question: A person believes that she or he has been touched or violated in an unwanted, unsolicited, halakhically forbidden, and therefore abusive fashion. To report or not to report? Is there any reason in Judaism not to go to the police? Should Jewish law ever trump civil law in criminal matters?
[Administrator's note: Related questions appear at:
http://www.jewishvaluesonline.org/question.php?id=700
http://www.jewishvaluesonline.org/question.php?id=500]

A person believes that she or he has been touched or violated in an unwanted, unsolicited, halakhically forbidden, and therefore abusive fashion. To report or not to report? Is there any reason in Judaism not to go to the police? Should Jewish law ever trump civil law in criminal matters? [Administrator's note: Related questions appear at: http://www.jewishvaluesonline.org/question.php?id=700 http://www.jewishvaluesonline.org/question.php?id=500]

Response:

The question is puzzling, because to answer it, one would need to know some missing important and relevant detail. The questioner specifically seeks guidance about going to the police to report abuse. The police are agents sworn to uphold the laws of our civil society, but not the halakhah. Hence, secular definitions of abuse will be pertinent to an answer, and expert American legal advice, in addition to rabbinic responses, will be necessary.

Among the information that would allow for a fuller response: Was the unwanted and unsolicited touching deliberate or accidental? Did it consist of actions that would register as abuse in the secular law, such as groping? Or was it action that would not necessarily rise to that level, but which may have offended the questioner, such as a handshake for a person who observes a strict interpretation of the prohibition of physical contact between unrelated males and females? (These are extremes, but there are obviously intermediate situations.) Was the unwanted physical contact part of an initial meeting, or an unwelcome development of an existing relationship? It is possible to envision certain acts where even one infraction merits legal action, but other actions that would be best handled by the delivery of a sharp rebuke. Where on the spectrum did this event fall? If it was in the less-than-criminal part of the spectrum of behavior, did the questioner rebuke the other party? And if so, what was the result? And most generally, the questioner states “having a belief” that she or he was victimized thus; is this assertion one that would be beyond dispute before a reasonable auditor, or would the accused be able to offer a plausible alternate interpretation?

These points are not intended as a reproach to the questioner. It may be that, due to its public and written format, Jewish Values Online is not the best channel for airing that additional information. I would urge the questioner to find a trusted and learned Jewish advisor for a conversation to explore the question in more detail.

Nonetheless, there are nonetheless some general points worth stating, in the hopes that they will be helpful to the questioner.

Let us reaffirm the importance of respecting the physical body and intimate space of others. The general and overriding mitzvah, v’ahavta l’reakha kamokha, “Love the Other as yourself”, teaches us to treat the integrity of another person’s being with utmost respect. More specifically, the Jewish value of tzeni’ut, “modesty”, extends to prohibit interacting with another person’s body in an inappropriate manner.

Similarly, the mandate to love the other as one loves himself or herself applies in situations where a physical act caused mental anguish, whether or not it would be judged as abuse in a secular legal venue.

Regarding the “synagogue/state” dimension of the inquiry about going to the police, one senses that here, too, important aspects of the question lie beneath the surface. Is the questioner wrestling with the pre-modern Jewish taboo against archaotehem shel goyim, the prohibition against resorting to Gentile courts? That taboo reflected the medieval political and social reality of Jews having less than equal standing in courts presided over by members of a hostile majority culture. It is not a relevant factor in deciding whether to resort to the American legal system. While the United States continues to grapple with issues of class and ethnicity, both in and out of the courtroom, the promise made by President George Washington to the representatives of the synagogues of our country, that this country “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance” is the dominant reality for Jews in the American legal system.

Or perhaps the questioner is concerned about the issue of motzi shem ra’, spreading an evil report about a fellow Jew in the broader society? Here, if the questioner is justified in believing that abuse has taken place, exposing the guilty party is a matter of justice, not of slander. But again, to ascertain whether the courts are the right venue for that, the questioner should get legal advice from American legal practitioners.

The questioner also poses a broader inquiry, albeit one stemming from this particular situation: Regarding Jewish law and civil law, in the American context, the Talmudic principle dina d’malkhuta dina, “the law of the land is the law” is the first applicable dictum. Jews are bidden to uphold American law. That principle was first enunciated by the Babylonian Rabbi Samuel in the third century, in order to reach a modus vivendi with a new Persian regime. The principle is all the more applicable today, because the areas of difference between the American legal system and the halakhah do not amount to an attack upon the integrity of Judaism. The First Amendment of our Bill of Rights guarantees us protection from a state-imposed religion as well as the free exercise of our religion, and the U.S. Supreme Court has relied on those guarantees to strike down certain American laws, such as the mandatory reading of Christian biblical texts in public schools, that were hostile to the practice of Judaism. This is worth emphasis, because precisely in that part of the Jewish community most committed to the observance of halakhah, there is sometimes a lamentable lack of energy for the implementation of the Talmudic respect given to the laws of the secular society of which we are citizens.

Therefore, if in the situation giving rise to the question at hand, the alleged offender has indeed committed an action that violates American laws, the victim not only may report it, but ought to do so.

If it should turn out, on the other hand, that this is not a criminal matter by American standards, then there are halakhic recourses available, varying with the particular faith community in which the questioner lives. For the Orthodox, there is the option of summoning an offender to a din torah. For the non-Orthodox as well as the Orthodox, there is the social sanction of the community, expressed in synagogue norms.

Finally, if the questioner finds herself or himself in a subcommunity of faith where real abuse (sadly and typically on the part of males in positions of authority, with females or underage males as the victims) is winked at, then I sincerely wish Heaven’s blessings of strength and courage for this individual, to be able to sound the alarm and help raise consciousness about an abuse of the system that needs correction, so that all other abuses can not thrive.

Question: My father's last words were that he never wanted to see my sister again. I never told my sister about this, but my sister's last act was to have herself buried next to my father without consulting me.
I feel that I should commemorate my father by placing some barrier or inscription between his gave and hers. How would I do that?

The questioner’s filial piety is worthy of respect. In its several discussions of The Fifth Commandment, the Talmud specifies that it extends beyond the lifespan of the parent to include acts of mourning and memorialization. Tractate Mo’ed Katan, chapter 3, details the rituals enjoined upon the bereaved, and repeatedly commands stricter and more extensive behavior when the deceased is a parent. For example, the duration of mourning the loss of other relatives is 30 days, but for a parent, 12 months. Clearly, the questioner’s desire to fulfill the dying wish of his father fits into this category of filial piety. (I commend to the questioner’s attention Gerald Blidstein, Honor Thy Father and Mother: Filial Responsibility in Jewish Law and Ethics.)

As for the creation of some barrier between two graves, that is probably a matter subject to the cemetery’s internal rules. Some cemeteries allow low metal railings, but others do not. Likewise, some cemeteries allow the planting of hedge-type plants, but others insist on a “park-like” appearance. If the cemetery were to disallow any interposition, that would not constitute valid reason for disinterring the father’s remains. Jewish law acknowledges only a few, select reasons to justify disturbing the final resting place of the deceased, and this case does not fit into those categories.

I would counsel not to place any inscription on the tombstone that would cast disrespect upon the deceased sister. Shaming the dead, who can not hear and defend themselves, violates the commandment in Leviticus 19:14, “Do not curse the deaf.”

Without presuming to judge the reasons for the deceased father’s animosity towards the sister, I would nonetheless raise some questions that perhaps only those who know the details of this family situation could answer. Moreover, perhaps even they would need to acknowledge that the answers to these questions are beyond mortal’s knowledge.

Would the father have reconciled with the sister had he lived longer, and thus retracted his dying words? One might be tempted to say “no”, but only Heaven knows the full answer to such a question. Estranged relatives have repeatedly mended even horribly strained relations. The reconciliation of Joseph and his brothers, narrated in the closing chapter of Genesis, is a model for all subsequent Jewish treatments of this universal theme.

Was the father wholly the aggrieved party, and was his rejection of the sister wholly justified? Again, I do not presume to know the details that the questioner knows, but I am suggesting that only Heaven knows the full story. This is relevant because, when a dying person makes a wish that is contrary to Jewish law, we are duty-bound to ignore that wish. The terminology of our tradition is “mushba’ v’omed mi-har Sinai”, meaning that the dying person is already under obligation to follow the laws given to our entire people at Mt. Sinai, and thus is not at liberty to command his heirs to disregard any of those laws. In his final words, was the father transgressing “Love thy neighbor as thyself” (Leviticus 19:16)?

Was the father fully in his right mind when dying? If not, then his words ought to be received with compassion, but not followed literally.

These questions, perhaps unanswerable, are intended to strengthen the resolve of the questioner not to act in such a way as would casts public aspersions against the deceased sister. There are times when the Jewish counsel shev v’al ta’aseh, “stay put and do not act”, while psychologically less satisfying than performing dramatic action, is nonetheless the wisest course.

Finally, let it be pointed out that “the dust returns to the earth as it was, but the spirit returns to God, who gave it” (Ecclesiastes 12:7). The remains of the father are not blessed with sight. Burying the sister in the adjacent grave does not cause her to fall within the father’s gaze.

May God, Who is everywhere, be close to the hearts of those who mourn, and bring them consolation.

Question: How can a socially isolated Jew with Asperger syndrome find a Jewish soulmate?
[Administrator's note: A related question can be found on Jewish Values Online at: http://www.jewishvaluesonline.org/question.php?id=860]

This question is a plea, as much as a question of Jewish law, and deserves recognition at the level of the heart as well as that of the head. So let me “put my cards on the table”, as an advocate for inclusiveness in the Jewish institutional world. In the congregation that I serve, we are visibly and vocally committed to welcoming people regardless of the differences that all too often hinder socialization. As a result, various differently-abled people have joined our congregation. It grieves us to hear the stories of subtle or overt rejection that they have experienced.

Theologically, the Jewish embrace of the differently-abled should start with an understanding of the meaning of being human, as taught in the opening chapter of Genesis. We are created b’tzelem elohim, “in the Divine image”. While there is a legitimate range of interpretations of that phrase, the main Jewish understanding is that it refers to a spiritual, not a physical, likeness that each of us bears to our Creator. Each of us! Male and female (see Genesis 1:27 and 5:2); Each of us! Swift of foot or slow of foot (Ecclesiastes 9:11), fluent of speech or dysfluent (Exodus 3:10), sound of gait or lame (Genesis 32:31-32). All the differences in abilities are matters of blessing. Some of us are blessed with greater bodily-kinesthetic intelligence than others; some, with greater mathematical, or verbal, or emotional, intelligence—but those blessings do not affect the fundamental equality of every human, because everyone, a son or daughter of Adam and Eve, is endowed with tzelem elohim.

Over the past forty years in North American society, signal progress has been made in first tolerating, and then truly embracing, our neighbors coping with a variety of physical and emotional challenges. But we can acknowledge that there is a particular obstacle to be surmounted when the challenge affects inter-personal relations rather than physical coordination. When they do not know that their neighbor is, in the words of the questioner, a “socially isolated Jew with Asperger’s Syndrome”, people are at risk of mis-identifying the source of the difficulties. They encounter the symptoms of inflexible, or stereotypic, or perseverative behavior, and, unthinkingly interpreting them as rudeness, they react defensively, with the result of deepening the isolation of their neighbor still more. The onlookers are wrong to do so, but they need to be helped, not castigated. They are mistakenly applying otherwise adaptive social behavior, in their ignorance of what is actually the case.

As in the early days of the mid-20th century Civil Rights and Feminist movements, the proper tool for combating the ignorance of the majority is “consciousness-raising”. This can take place at the institutional level, such as the “Disabilities Awareness Shabbat” that my congregation programs every year. But it also must take place at the personal level. The individual who deals with Asperger’s Syndrome—or his advocate, if that is appropriate—has a pedagogical task, to do his part to help his neighbor understand him better.

Since the diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome has progressed notably in recent decades, it stands to reason that many adults who might well have that condition have never been properly diagnosed, and who are consequently dismissed or even shunned for their behavioral exceptionalities. As a heuristic measure, I would recommend that all of us, when encountering a person whose behavior might fit the diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome, should entertain the possibility that our neighbor is not simply being socially less adept, but may in fact be coping, unaided by medical science, with a known condition. In the words of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perachiah in Pirke Avot 1:6, “When you assess people, tip the balance in their favor.”

In writing these words, I am painfully aware that I have not answered one critical dimension of the questioner’s cry from the heart: the question of finding a soul-mate. I do not believe that there is a panacea for the problem of loneliness, which is, indeed, the very first thing wrong with God’s creation, by God’s own judgment (Genesis 2:18). Socialization groups and special education programs, starting in childhood, the efforts of the Jewish Family Service in communities where one exists, synagogue and Jewish Community Center initiatives all can play a constructive role. A particularly fine program is the Camp Ramah “Tikvah” program for tweens, teens and young adults. Alas, these programs, while critically important, will not work like magic.

But creating places of safety and acceptance, circles of concern, compassion and warmth, are in our power as a Jewish community to effectuate, and therefore, they are our responsibility.

In the words of this week’s Torah portion, “That which is hidden is for the LORD our God; that which is overt is our responsibility, and that of our children, forever” (Deuteronomy 29:28)

Question: When my frum therapist advises me to carry out my fantasies of female domination, when my wife's therapist agrees, when our couple therapist advises me not to fight against my inclination but to work this out with my wife, when the halacha allows it, when my love for my wife thru domination has never been so high, what should be the attitude of a frum Jew? Is it better to be machmir and try to be like everybody else, or to listen to the therapists who know me and my wife? What would Jewish values say I should do? Thank you for your answer.

Question: When my frum therapist advises me to carry out my fantasies of
female domination, when my wife's therapist agrees, when our couple
therapist advises me not to fight against my inclination but to work this
out with my wife, when the halacha allows it, when my love for my wife thru
domination has never been so high, what should be the attitude of a frum
Jew? Is it better to be machmir and try to be like everybody else, or to
listen to the therapists who know me and my wife? What would Jewish values
say I should do? Thank you for your answer.
Answer: Another questioner might dispute the characterization of these
aspects of intimate behavior between a consenting husband and wife as
objectionable. But another questioner is not struggling with the issues
that this questioner is. My answer is intended to be both halakhic and
therapeutic, and to speak to this questioner directly:
As the questioner, being an observant Jew, almost certainly knows, the Torah
commands us to care for our health zealously. All the medical professionals
whom he has cited agree that the particular behavior he is resisting would,
in his case, be supportive of his mental health. So why is he resisting the
consensus of their advice?
The answer is obvious. The questioner has also absorbed a sense of
appropriate male and female roles, perhaps from Torah culture, perhaps from
secular western society; but whatever the source, the questioner feels,
intuitively, that such behavior would be morally objectionable.
I write these words, to reassure the questioner that he may follow the
therapists' advice without guilt. Let me remind the questioner of what
Maimonides has written in the Hilkhot De'ot (Laws of Ethical Conduct) 2:1.
"For those who suffer from bodily ailments, the bitter may seem sweet and
the sweet may seem bitter."
While others would disagree, let us stipulate that the questioner's desires
represent an ailment, or at least a variation of normal that the questioner
himself regards as an ailment. What his therapists are trying to tell him, translated
into Torah terms, is that, for him (and with the willing participation
of his wife), allowing these expressions of intimacy is simply the medicine
that he requires. Medicine that is appropriate for a person dealing with a
condition would be inappropriate for a person not dealing with that
condition.
Hence: As long as the questioner is in his current state of mind, he
may-and what is more, he ought to-- engage in this form of allowable
intimacy, of course, with his wife's consent. If a day should arrive when
the questioner no longer desires that, it will signal that he has reached a
different mental state, and at that point, he will naturally want to
discontinue this behavior.
One final point: the questioner does not know what happens in the privacy
of other people's bedrooms. It goes beyond the evidence to say that, if he
desists from acting out his intimate style, that he is being "like everybody
else."
Let the powerful rhetoric of Moshe Rabbenu be the last word: Ha-nistarot
lashem elokenu, v'haniglot lanu. Let the hidden things be dealt with by G-d
alone; for us and for out children the obligation is to deal only with those
deeds that are revealed to people. (D'varim 29:28)
Rabbi Michael Panitz
Masorti/ Conservative
5 Adar II, 5744/ March 7, 2014

Question: Whats does Jewish law and thought say to a woman whose father never provided for her a husband? Even though I know that modern society tells her that she is to find her own husband?
I am now 44, and I have been led astray by lust, yearning for love and companionship. I had a child: now if I were to find a potential husband I couldn't offer him the opportunity to have a first born son. What should I do????

Answer: First, let me reassure the questioner that Judaism is all about second chances. The Rabbis tell us that the penitent achieves spiritual heights that the life-long righteous have never attained. Whatever mistakes, or even sins, of relationship are part of the past record of your life, you are free to live differently today and tomorrow. Yearning for love and companionship is certainly understandable. After all, in Genesis chapter 2, after an entire creation story punctuated by the expression, “God saw that it was good”, the very first thing that is not good is loneliness: Lo tov heyote ha-adam levado” (Genesis 2: 18). If that yearning has been responsible for wrong choices in the past, you are free to make right choices in the future.

Let me emphasize, that you are free. A father’s past actions or inactions do not change that. Regarding the fact that your father did not provide a husband for you: over the many centuries of our people’s existence, we have had different kinds of arrangements for marriage. In the Bible, the prospective bridegroom would negotiate with the father of the bride-to be, as is recounted in the famous story of Jacob and Laban (Genesis 29:18).But even in Talmudic times, our societal customs were changing.The Talmud records that the ketubah (marriage contract) went through several stages of development, and by the end of the process, the groom presented it, as a kind of promissory note, directly to the bride, rather than giving a sum of dowry money to the father, as had been the case in Biblical times. In the Middle Ages, both status and ceremony continued to change.The practice of “Shiddukhin” developed, as a parallel to, first, Roman legal usage, and later, to the medieval Christian practice of engagement (Z.W. Falk, Jewish Matrimonial Law in the Middle Ages, p. 88).In modern times, in most Jewish circles, as well as in western society in general, it has become the norm, rather than the exception, for adults to make their own decisions as to a marriage partner, rather than expecting their fathers (or their parents, generally) to select mates for them. It is possible that you have grown up in a Jewish sub-culture where arranged marriages are still common, but the essence of adulthood is taking responsibility for one’s own life. At 44, a woman can lament what her father failed to do for her, but it is important not to be trapped in a sense of helplessness.

There is even a biblical allusion to the fact that over time, women are correct to take greater initiative in arranging for their own marriages.In Jeremiah 31:22, we hear the prophet’s assurance that G-d’s creation is not limited to one historic social order, in which the male courts the female; part of the interaction of the Divine with history is that women are empowered to court, actively.

With respect to the final part of your question, that, being a mother, you would not be able to present a future husband with a first born-son, let me reassure you that perfection is not always attainable, but that should not deter us from doing such good as we can accomplish, and from enjoying such blessings as we may legitimately seek. There are many wonderful options for us, even in this imperfect world. If you were to find a man who wanted to build a future with you, the many positives of that scenario far outweigh the fact that a first-born child to the two of you would not classify as the peter rechem to which your question alludes.Our history is replete with examples of people who married after one or both had previously brought children into the world, and each marriage affords a precious opportunity for righteous and spiritually noble living.So, you should not be deterred from pursuing possible good relationships because of the fact that you have already brought a child into the world.

Finally, let me address the emotions that seem to be behind the questions, with their multiple question marks. The pain of regret and the sense of despair at contemplating a life of constricted options is certainly a hard burden to carry.You may find relief in the course of obtaining counseling from a reputable psychological professional.Theologically, let me leave you with the following text from our Psalms:

Min ha-metzar kara’ti ya-h.

'Anani b’merchav ya-h (Psalms 117:5)

Which is commonly translated, “In distress I called on the LORD; the LORD answered me and brought me relief”, but which we may also render, “From a place of constriction I called upon G-d, Who answered me [and showed me] broad vistas.”Do not despair of the hope that your life, now seemingly impoverished in options, will yet reveal meaningful pathways.

Question: I would like a Jewish perspective for this question that appeared in the New York Times Magazine,:"The Ethicist." Is it unethical to lie to your boss for the purpose of getting a job elsewhere?
[Administrator's note: A related question is found at http://www.jewishvaluesonline.org/question.php?id=428.]

The basic answer to this question is that it is indeed unethical to lie to your boss for the purpose of getting a job elsewhere. It is hard to imagine an ethical system that slights honesty as a norm. Judaism teaches a high commitment to truth. 'Emet, "Truth", is considered one of the three pillars of the world. (Pirke Avot 1:18). The Rabbis, adopting the symbol of a ruler's signet ring, say that "Truth is the signet of the Holy Blessed One."

It may be that the questioner is motivated by a protest against an imbalance of power, in favor of the boss and against the employee. Perhaps the questioner is hoping for some flexibility that will help to correct that imbalance, and thus, build some protection against abuses of power on the part of the employer. One can be sympathetic with that desire, and yet not counsel that honesty is dispensable. I would suggest that "worker privacy" is a domain where some relief could be offered the questioner, although within fairly strict limits.

The frame of the situation may suggest some of the practical issues that could arise. Is the worker afraid to be honest about taking time off to look for other employment? Here, the specifics of the worker's leave policy come into play. I believe that a worker can be vague about the motivations for "personal leave" (as opposed to sick leave, which is a specific claim that the worker is indisposed.) I also believe that a worker has a right to privacy. If he or she is performing all required duties up to expectations, the employer does not have a right to know details about the worker's life that are unrelated to job performance.

But it would not be ethical to push these considerations beyond their proper domain. Essentially, the situations in Judaism where our tradition softens the rigors of honest reporting are to spare a third party, not to spare the person doing the prevaricating. Thus, Hillel counsels that every bride is beautiful (without specifying what defines beauty), and so it is correct to praise a bride for her beauty, even if conventional opinion would not judge that woman beautiful at other times-- as if conventional opinion really matters! The Rabbis noticed an intriguing nuance in God's conversation with Abraham concerning Sarah's laughter of incredulity, when the Three Angels visited the couple and foretold that post-menopausal Sarah would give birth. Sarah is reported as saying, "what, am I at long last to have delight, with my husband so old?" (Genesis 18:12) When God reported Sarah's speech back to Abraham (verse 13), he changed one crucial detail, and said that Sarah had described herself as being old-- herself, and not Abraham. The Rabbis infer that such a "white lie" is permissible in order to bring or preserve marital peace. But none of these allowable prevarications serve as foundation stones for any structure that we might wish to build to justify prevaricating so as to harm another. Leaving an employer represents at least a challenge, and possibly a harm, to the employer's interests. Workers are not slaves, and have a right to leave their employment for better circumstances. But they also have an obligation not to mislead the employer in the time period leading up to when they serve notice.

Question: What are the Jewish values associated with pollution?
[Administrator's note: related questions can be found on JVO at:
http://www.jewishvaluesonline.org/question.php?id=117
http://www.jewishvaluesonline.org/question.php?id=295
http://www.jewishvaluesonline.org/question.php?id=293 and
http://www.jewishvaluesonline.org/question.php?id=598.]

In addressing this question, it is useful to begin with a methodological observation, appropriate to this question and to all others of its nature: there are differences in vocabulary between some of our modern concerns and the language of our classical and authoritative sources. In such cases, we need to find the closest parallels in our tradition, and then "translate" those expressions into contemporary vocabulary, consciously and responsibly.

In the topic of "Jewish values associated with pollution", we need to apply this general principle. Until the last century, there was only a slight consciousness of the long-term and irreversible potential for damage associated with pollution. People thought that the power of atmosphere, ocean and land to diffuse and neutralize pollutants was sufficient to free people from any need to curb their behavior. Even a half-century ago, when Rachel Carson sparked the modern environmentalist movement with her Silent Spring, public opinion was divided, and today, there remain skeptics who dismiss global warming and other examples of dire consequences of human environmental irresponsibility. Consequently, we would not expect to find a plethora of classical Jewish sources on pollution per se.

On the other hand, it is demonstrable that Judaism has always inculcated a respect for the environment, as God's creation. If, prior to the Industrial Revolution and the modern population explosion, there was no specific need to elevate that sense of respect to a special value and set of behavioral mandates, the basic concept of environmental stewardship is demonstrably an authentic Jewish teaching. To extend these verses to support a contemporary Jewish call to curb pollution is a legitimate application of old wisdom to new problems.

We may cite three biblical texts as paradigmatic for articulating an ethos of environmental stewardship: Genesis 1:31, Genesis 2:15, and Deuteronomy 11:13-21. In the first of these verses, we read that God, seeing all of the Divine work of Creation, pronounced it "very good." This is an amplification of the "behold, it was good" phrase associated with each of the six individual days of creation. We may infer from this that, for the environment, "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts." If we drive a species to extinction, we imperil the entire eco-system in which it played its part. Pollution, along with climate change and habitat destruction, is one of the most culpable drivers of extinction, now proceeding at a pace comparable with the great extinctions of the geological past.

In Genesis 2, the Garden of Eden story, God places the human(s) in the Garden, "to work it and to safeguard it." That expresses a basic understanding of our relationship to the natural world. Humans are entitled to work it for our benefit, but not to the point of damaging it irreparably. The "working" and the "safeguarding" need to remain in balance.

The Deuteronomy text, known to many as the second paragraph of the "shema" prayer, castigates the Israelites for idolatry. It warns them that the consequences of worshipping false gods will be ecological catastrophe and the destruction of our land's ability to sustain us. This passage was an embarassment to certain non-Orthodox thinkers, a few generations back. For example, the great Reconstructionist theologian, Mordecai Kaplan, omitted that passage from his prayer book. After all, how could a modern Jew, imbued with a scientific world view, believe that God micromanages the environment to allow rain to fall upon the just and withold it from the unjust? But today we may rightly read that passage as especially timely. For,in castigating idolatry, the biblical text may be understood as an indictment of the thoughtless environmental irresponsibility that we, as a species, are practicing on a dangerously augmenting scale. At its heart, the behavior of the polluter says that there are no limits that humans need to respect, no human actions whose consequences will trigger natural changes that we can not control or remedy. That refusal to recognize our basic limits is a form of self-worship-- the most characteristic idolatry of our era. Seen in this light, Deuteronomy 11:13-21 is chillingly relevant: when we idolize ourselves and fail to live gracefully within God's world, we bring about ecological disasters that will sweep us away.

Turning from biblical to rabbinic literature, we likewise find texts that we can marshal for the case that Judaism mandates respect for God's creation and prohibits behavior, such as pollution, expressing disrespect for the environment that God has made. Genesis Rabbah 10, commenting on Genesis 2:1, "[The heavens and the earth were finished} and all their hosts," emphasizes that every species has its worth in the divinely-constructed ecological web. "Even those species that you see and conclude are superfluous in the world, such as flies and gnats-- even they are among the things divinely created; and God uses each of them to fulfill Divine purposes." Here, again, is a basic statement of respect for the diversity of life on earth, and by extension, an underpinning for a contemporary expression of the Jewish ethos of environmental responsibility.

In summation: the application is contemporary, but the Jewish teaching to respect God's world and to avoid polluting it is fully authentic. In fact, today, it is more important than ever that Jewish teachers expound this teaching vigorously.

Question: I have a question that I need to have cleared up. Since I was a little girl, I have not wanted children. I don't feel comfortable around them, and I just cant seem to wrap my head around kids at all. The problem comes in with the commandment of "be fruitful and multiply." What should I do and what does Judaism say about this situation?
[Administrator's note: a related question is found on JVO at http://www.jewishvaluesonline.org/question.php?id=185.]

It would be disingenuous to pretend that Judaism is not pro-parenthood. As the questioner correctly states, parenthood is a commandment. Indeed, it is traditionally thought of as the first commandment, because the blessing that God gave to the first humans, as recorded in Genesis 1: 28. Interestingly, the language of that verse is not self-evidently the language of commandment. The biblical words can be parsed as a blessing, i.e. a partaking of some aspect of God's power on the part of created beings. Similarly, a few verses earlier, in Genesis 1:22, God blessed the animals, saying that they shall be fruitful and multiply-- and there is no way to read that as a commandment. Nonetheless, rabbinic tradition construed these words to the first humans as a mandate-- humans not only can procreate, but they ought to, under the correct conditions

That last restriction, "under the correct conditions", may serve as a consolation for the questioner, and also as a spur to further reflection. She might want to explore the psychological roots of her lack of comfort with children-- but regardless, If, upon mature consideration, she is convinced that she would not function well as a biological parent, then she may legitimately conclude that this is one commandment that she will not fulfill in its literal sense. But surely, there are other ways in which she can help secure the future of our human species and, more specifically, of the Jewish people! One need not be a biological parent to be a blessing in the lives of children. Volunteering in any of the many youth-oriented programs of synagogues, or in Jewish parochial and supplemental schools, may give the questioner a way to grow closer to children without the danger of being an unsuccessful parent. Regular participation in the institutions of Jewish life will give the children whom she contacts to see, in her, a worthy model for emulation.

I would imagine that the questioner is of child-bearing age; otherwise, there would not be much point to the question. Her age bracket gives her the opportunity to provide an accessible model of good conduct for children.There are congregations where, unfortunately, pre-bar mitzvah children generally see their grandparents' generation, and not other members of their parents generation, from one shabbat to the next. Steadfast attendance at worship services can function, not only as a mitzvah in its own right, but also as a gift to the children who will be present.

More generally, as our generation is fond of repeating, "it takes a village to raise a child." This bit of wisdom resonates well with Jewish tradition. All of us, as a Jewish community, need to create an atmosphere of ethical choices, of spiritual concerns, and of reverential patterns of religious conduct, to do the work of tikkun olam that is, in a general sense, our gift to our children.

Without in any sense promoting flippancy towards the non-fulfillment of one or another of the commandments, it is nonetheless appropriate to remind ourselves that, in the Rabbinic view expressed at the end of the Mishnaic tractate "makkot", God gave us many commandments to provide many opportunities for the refinement of our character. Instead of seeing "100 % as the minimum passing grade" and being disabled by scrupulousness over the non-fulfillment of every last one of them, we ought to fulfill all the mitzvot that we can, and to seek to perform those deeds with both joy and reverence.

Hopefully, one day in the future, the questioner will be able to look back upon a life of many mitzvot fulfilled, and to conclude that she may not have been the leading lady in the drama of the upbringing of any one family of children, but that she was a critically important supporting cast member in the large-scale drama of the upbringing of the rising Jewish generation.

QUESTION: Is there a Jewish point of view about respect for ancestors? Is there a name for it? How about all the dead, including non-Jews?

ANSWER:Judaism teaches high respect for ancestors.Most directly, the Fifth of the Ten Divine Utterances (more commonly but less precisely known as the Ten Commandments), Exodus 20:12 and Deuteronomy 5:16, mandates “honor your father and your mother”.This is restated, with a slightly different emphasis, in the “Holiness Code”, Leviticus 19:3:“Let a person revere his mother and his father.”

Because of the centrality to Jewish tradition of the Fifth Utterance, kabbed et avikha… (“Honor your father”), the name of the value concept is kibbud av, i.e. “honoring the father”, or more broadly, kibbud av va-‘em, “honoring the father and mother.” But it should be clear that the tradition does not limit the honor to only the immediate ancestors.

Post-biblical (rabbinic) commentary extends this basic point to grandparents.The leading 16th century Ashkenazic rabbi, Moses Isserles, ruled that a grandson may recite the mourner’s kaddish in memory of his maternal grandfather, let alone his paternal grandfather. (She’elot u-teshuvot ha-Rema, # 118). The Rabbis also mandated respect for one’s in-laws, and commanded the participation in one’s mate’s sorrow during bereavement. For example, “a man rends his garments at the death of his father in law or mother in law, in respect for his wife.” (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Mo’ed Katan, 20b)

Since the two biblical sources commanding filial piety speak in slightly different terms, the Rabbis investigated the nuances of each verb.What is honor and what is reverence? The Rabbis defined honor in terms of personal service that the (adult as well as juvenile) child would render for a parent: physically caring for the parent, attending to his elementary needs of nutrition and domicile, serving as his escort while away from home. Reverence refers to an emotional attitude: rejoicing in the company of the parent and in the opportunity to fulfill the parent’s needs, resisting any sense of resentment at having to care for a parent.From these examples, it should be clear that kibbud av applies, perhaps especially, to situations in which the child is fully grown and the parent is aged. As a mentor of mine expresses it, “kibbud av ain’t for sissies!” Here, too, it should be clear that the kinds of activities mandated by the commandments to honor and revere apply fully to our relationship with our grandparents, whose advanced age will often present physical needs and emotional challenges to us when we are still at an earlier stage of our own life trajectories.

Jewish tradition clearly extends the obligation of kibbud av beyond the death of the parent. The rituals of mourning and memorialization, including the tearing of one’s garments at the news of death, the recitation of the mourner’s kaddish, and so on, may strike us today as psychological supports for the bereaved, and indeed they are; but in the language of the classical sources, they are presented as actions undertaken to show respect (and in the case of the kaddish, to show spiritual support) for the deceased.

The final part of the question has a particular contemporary relevance, and perhaps it is the kernel of the problem pondered by the questioner. In an age with many more inter-marriages than was the norm in previous generations, and also many more conversions to Judaism, is there a Jewish obligation of the Jew- by- choice to memorialize a non-Jewish ancestor? In this area, we may frankly acknowledge that a change of sensibility divides modernist from traditionalist interpreters of Judaism.The classic expression is that the convert is no longer bound by ties of relatedness to his Gentile family of origin.The spiritual as well as social reality in the Jewish communal circles I have served, on the other hand, is that the Jew by choice and his Gentile parents, or the grandchild of one set of Jewish and one set of Gentile grandparents, will quite naturally relate to his Gentile forebears in a loving way, analogous to his relationship to his Jewish forebears.

Given this reality, I counsel the Jewish children or grandchildren of non-Jews that they may take advantage of the support and consolation provided by Jewish mourning ceremonial, when their non-Jewish relatives have passed away, although they are not obliged to do so. Most of the Jewish people I have counseled have opted to mourn all of their deceased relatives, using the spiritual and behavioral vocabulary of our tradition, and they report that the experience has in fact deepened their appreciation for the teachings of Judaism as guides for us throughout our lives.

If the questioner should be struggling with the pain of grief and bereavement, it is my prayer that Ha-Makom, i.e. God, Who is everywhere, will be very close to him, and will ease his tribulations, b’tokh she’ar avelei tziyon vi-rushalayim, amongst all other mourners within our faith community.

Question: Can we apply the lessons learned from the Maccabees in the story of Chanukah (to have courage, to stand up and fight, not to bow to outside pressures) to Israel's current struggle for its rights and independence?

Question: Can we apply the lessons learned from the Maccabees in the story of Chanukah (to have courage, to stand up and fight, not to bow to outside pressures) to Israel's current struggle for its rights and independence?

Answer: History is filled with object lessons, both positive and negative, and the story of Chanukah certainly contains its share of inspirational examples, both those mentioned in the question and others:

The questioner is correct in citing Chanukah as an example from history of the need for the Jewish people to resist oppression. In fact, Chanukah represents the first successful revolt on behalf of religious freedom in world history! And so, in addition to the lesson of self-reliance, we can add the lesson of the importance of the free exercise of religion, one of the famous “four freedoms” that President Franklin D. Roosevelt identified as characteristically American concerns. The free exercise of religion means that a society will celebrate—or at least tolerate—religious diversity, internally, and will avoid looking at the international scene through lenses distorted by jihad or crusade mentality.

The history of the Hasmonean leaders of the Jewish people, before and after the Chanukah holiday, contains other lessons, as well. The Jewish people were bitterly divided in the decade prior to the Hasmonean revolt. Some Jews advocated total assimilation into the Greek cultural sphere. Others were totally opposed to change. The Hasmoneans themselves pursued a middle course, opting to acculturate in certain matters, but resisting any encroachment on fundamental Jewish perspectives and practices. Notice that the birth of the holiday was itself a religious innovation! The Five Books of Moses do not contain any holidays, initiated by Moses and Joshua, the successful generals, to commemorate a military victory. That action was more in line with what Hellenistic generals were accustomed to doing. Similarly, we find that the later kings of the Hasmonean dynasty, such as John Hycanus (reigned 134- 104 BCE) and Alexander Jannaeus (103-76 BCE), styled themselves by Greek as well as Hebrew names. As in so many other examples from Jewish history, knowing how to balance tradition and change is an important lesson from Chanukah.

There may be a nuance in the questioner’s formulation of encouraging Israel to disregard the positions of outsiders, including allies, if there are differences of opinion. I would uphold the religious and ethical mandate of Israel, as a state created with the responsibility of protecting Jewish life in a hostile world, to take lonely stands, when it is in the right. But splendid isolation is not a good in and of itself. One of the lessons of Chanukah is that the Jewish state needs to court strategic allies, when possible. In his struggle against the Seleucid overlord, Judah Maccabee sent a diplomatic mission to Rome, where it was well received, with the result that, “for the first time since the Exile, the Jews were recognized as an independent power, and by the very people that ruled the world.” (Elias Bickerman, From Ezra to the Last of the Maccabees, p. 133.) By extension, Israel should have a regard for the maintenance of its alliance with the United States, the foremost among its allies.

Question: I want to convert to Judaism, but I've been told I should look to convert under a rabbi approved by the Chief Rabbi in Israel in order for my conversion to be considered kosher. Is this true?

Although we often think of religious matters as being fixed for all time, in fact, they, too, have histories. Conversion to Judaism is a classic case in point.

In the Bible, we do not see evidence of ceremonies of conversion. Israelites were the majority culture in their own land, and people entering that society were known as "aliens", gerim. The Bible commands the Israelites to be kind-hearted and generous towards gerim. In some instances, laws were commanded "for alien and for citizen alike", whereas in other cases, notably the consumption of the annual Passover offering, aliens were specifically excluded from the ritual.

What we identify as conversion to Judaism is a product of the post-Biblical period, and for a very powerful reason: in that later era, Jews lived not as the citizens of an independent state, but rather, as the members of an internally-autonomous community, living inside of some larger state headed by a Gentile political authority. Hence, "becoming Jewish" meant something very different than it had meant in the days of the Bible.

The Rabbis, who were vituosic masters in reinterpreting Judaism so as to be relevant to changing times, codified the procedures for receiving converts in their era of Jewish life. The candidates needed to satisfy their interlocuters that their motivation was sincere, and henceforth, they were to be "received immediately", while being taught some portion of the commandments. The rituals connected to receiving candidates included circumcision, for males, and immersion in a proper ritual bath, for both males and females. These procedures and rituals are spelled out in The Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Yevamoth, 46b, and codified in the standard medieval rabbinic law codes (Tur and Shulchan Arukh, Yoreh De'ah, # 268.

During the later Middle Ages, Jews lived under increasingly harsh political conditions, both in Muslim and in Christian lands. The dominant faiths sought to triumph over Judaism. Among the legal disabilities that they heaped upon the Jewish minority in their midst were harsh penalties designed to deter the Jewish community from receiving converts. In those difficult circumstances, Jewish leaders developed a skeptical attitude towards would-be converts, dissuading them repeatedly before deciding to admit the most persistent.

Further changes in both attitudes and curricular preparation have accompanied the emergence of rival denominations in modern Judaism. In the late 19th century, Reform Judaism focused on ethical as opposed to ceremonial behaviors, and in many Reform circles, circumcision and immersion were dropped; conversion candidates were received in synagogue ceremonies, without those other traditional rituals. In the 20th century, the (then-new) Conservative movement retained the traditional rituals, but relaxed the intially adversarial attitude. By mid-century, a typical Conservative rabbi would have a serious "heart to heart" discussion with a prospective candidate, to verify that the intention was worthy, but the late- medieval practice of dismissing a would-be convert several times ceased to be part of the religious practice of that denomination. Considering the sociological changes overtaking American Jewry, with intermarriage on the rise, the conversion of candidates engaged to Jews became a new priority.

Since its inception in the 19th century, the modern representatives of Jewish Orthodoxy have understood their movement as counter-cultural, defying the secularizing currents of western society. Hence, there have been dynamic processes at work within Orthodoxy designed to "raise the bar" in many areas of religious life.

Thus, while both Conservative and Orthodox denominations define themselves as loyal to halakhah (Jewish legal tradition), the one typically takes a liberalizing approach within the law, and the other, an ever-more stringent approach.

This historical orientation ought to make the current position of the Orthodox Chief Rabbinate in Israel more explicable. Israel is, by definition, a Jewish state, and yet there are different and competing definitions of Jewish identity in Israel today. The Orthodox Chief Rabbinate, which functions within the sphere of Israeli politics, is lobbying for acceptance of a stringent definition. In the area of conversion, that translates into less and less trust in the validity of the conversion process, unless it has been conducted by party-approved functionaries, i.e. rabbis acceptable to the current hierarchy.

I regret that the answer to this questioner is, "it depends on whom you ask". A Conservative Jew will accept the legitimacy of a Reform conversion, but only if the rituals of a religiously-celebrated circumcision (where applicable) and immersion have been fulfilled. Further to the right in the religious spectrum, the rejection of conversion work supervised by outsiders becomes automatic. An Orthodox Jew will not accept the legitimacy of a Conservative conversion. An Ultra-Orthodox Jew will not accept the legitimacy of an Orthodox conversion... and so on.

I would counsel the questioner to consider, as best he or she is able, the likely trajectory of his or her post-conversion life. If, by the best reckoning that can now be known, the questioner intends to live in a Reform or Conservative setting, then completing a conversion under the auspices of rabbis of the relevant denomination will surely suffice. If the questioner intends to live within the Orthodox community, then no other authority will suffice. Again, does the questioner intend to convert to Judaism and then to emigrate to Israel? That factor could also enter in the choice now--- although the questioner should know that both Reform and Conservative (Masorti) Jewish denominations are expanding their presence in Israel and serving the needs of many who regard themselves as being in the broad, middle zone between totally secular, and traditionalist sectarian.

Question: Are Jews outside Israel seen as part of the galut/exile, Diaspora, or a separate Peoplehood? In other words, how much emphasis is placed on Israel in defining Jews living outside it? Do you see the non-Israeli Jews and Israel as contributing to one another, independent from one another, or is Israel the center or focus?

The various wordings and subsections of the question contain several nuances, each of which is worthy of attention:

It bears high emphasis that all Jews are the members of one people. Wherever Jews live, they are united by kinship as well as creed. National identities in the countries of the Dispersion, while often significant to the cultural and political nuances of the Jewish experiences there, are in no sense a denial of the overarching—some would say, the mystical!—unity of the Jewish people.

In the early nineteenth century, when Jews were first vying for citizenship in the countries of western and central Europe, some leaders of the youthful Reform movement consciously negated the national dimension of Jewish identity, along with its Zionist implications. For example, the Pittsburgh Platform of 1885 declared, “We consider ourselves no longer a nation but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine… nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state.” But even within Reform Judaism, the awareness of the inescapable national—as well as religious—unity and identity of the Jewish people reasserted itself. The Columbus Platform of the Reform movement, in 1937, amended the previous century’s sentiments significantly. “Israel: Judaism is the soul of which Israel is the body. Living in all parts of the world, Israel has been held together by the ties of a common history, and above all, by the heritage of faith… In the rehabilitation of Palestine, the land hallowed by memories and hopes, we behold the promise of renewed life for many of our brethren. We affirm the obligation of all Jewry to aid in its upbuilding as a Jewish homeland…”

Today, with the Jewish society of Israel well into its second century of modern existence, we sometimes behold differences of emphasis between Israeli Jews and those living in the Diaspora. Moreover, some expressions of Jewish nationalism emanating from Israel have been disparaging of the non-Israeli experience. Nonetheless, the strong preponderance of opinion, both among Jews in Israel and in the Diaspora, reaffirms the worldwide unity of the Jewish people.

As I understand the second part of the question, it seeks to understand the degree of importance of Israel in Diasporic Jewish self-understanding. Do Jews living outside of Israel regard the modern Jewish State of Israel as importance in their Jewish identity, and if so, to what degree?

Here we see some differences of degree, but not an essential difference of kind, and I will focus on developments within the Masorti/ Conservative movement. In the first decades after the establishment of the modern State of Israel in 1948, Jewish education focused heavily on the Zionist accomplishment, reclaiming the wastelands of the Holy Land and fashioning a brave and, in many ways, an idealistic society, despite overwhelming, often deadly, opposition from its Arab neighbors and the indifference of too much of the world. The existential threat that hung over Israel prior to 1967, coupled with the newness of the state, contributed to the sense among Diasporic Conservative Jews that supporting Israel was a significant component in what it meant for our adherents to be Jewish. A generation born after 1967, and especially after the 1979 Peace treaty with Egypt, has not lived the same experiences as its elders, and hence the visceral sense of concern for Israel’s very existence is less among younger Jews--- perhaps unwisely, given the march to power of Islamic fundamentalism, beginning with the 1979 Iranian Revolution and continuing at an accelerated pace in the past two years. The specter of a nuclear- armed Iran ought to arouse the highest level of concern for Israel among Jews, wherever they live.

The documented, lower level of concern for Israel on the part of younger, non-Orthodox Jews today, as compared to the past, ought to be a challenge for Jewish educators and community leaders throughout the Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist and Renewal streams of Judaism--- but it ought not be accepted as a norm of Jewish life. On the contrary, it is an aberration. Certainly, the leadership and spokespeople of the Masorti/Conservative movement is committed to reaffirming the centrality of Israel in contemporary Jewish life, even while affirming the free choice of Jews to live where they choose and work for the betterment of their local societies.

In the third section of the question, I would affirm the first and last options, rather than the second: Diasporic and Israeli Jews do have much to contribute to each other, and that is consistent with the State of Israel and its society being at the center of Jewish focus.

For nearly two thousand years, Judaism developed as a minority community, often beleaguered and oppressed. Our religion has had ample experience in developing responses to powerlessness or to adverse power imbalances. Since the establishment of modern Israel, and especially since the expansion of Israel in 1967, Judaism has been faced with new dilemmas, arising from the responsible exercise of power in a still-hostile environment. Israeli and Diasporic Jews have much to say to each other about that new fact of Jewish life.

Again, the Diasporic experience of close, daily living in pluralistic societies can be an important resource for Israeli Jews, as they seek to handle the dynamics of pluralism from the relatively new perspective of being the majority culture. Conversely, the Israeli experience of Jewish national independence has had, and ought to continue to have, a powerful influence on the renewal of Jewish self-confidence in post-Holocaust Diasporic societies.

In sum, Judaism develops in tandem with Jewish historical experience. The varying foci of Jewish live in Israel and in the Diaspora represent a richer historical experience than either group could experience in isolation, and therefore, the best outcome for a 21st century Judaism that can give religious guidance to contemporary Jews is for a continuation and, indeed, a deepening, of the influence that Jews around the world have on each other.

Question: I had a career in television and film during which I represented sexual acts in the films. I feel very bad now. I was so unwise in choosing my roles. I wonder if it could possibly all be forgotten or forgiven, as I have suffered foe 30 years since. I wonder if this is a sin, and if so, is it so bad? I fear I will pay for it till my death. What does Judaism say about my situation?

QUESTION: I had a career in television and film during which I represented sexual acts in the films. I feel very bad now. I was so unwise in choosing my roles.. I wonder if it could possibly all be forgotten or forgiven, as I have suffered foe 30 years since..I wonder if this is a sin, and if so, is it so bad? I fear I will pay for it till my death. What does Judaism say about my situation?

Answer: Although the substance of the following answer would be the same, whenever I were to write it, by a fortuitous coincidence, I am turning to it shortly after the Fast Day of the 9th of Av, and so the words of the Biblical Book of Lamentations are still echoing in my consciousness. We read in the third chapter of that book:

But this do I call to mind, therefore I have hope:

The kindness of the LORD has not ended;

His mercies are not spent.

They are renewed every morning—Ample is Your grace!

(Lamentations 3:21-23)

Judaism teaches that repentance is the most powerful force in the relationship between each of us and our Creator. Yes, we sin. Everyone sins; everyone makes mistakes; everyone has reason to be ashamed. And yet, we can overcome that distance from God—not by means of some divine intercessor, as Christianity teaches, but rather by the free exercise of our own will. When we turn to God, and reject a path that we had earlier walked, we successfully transform our relationship to God.

In our tradition, repentance contains three dimensions. The first is charatah, “contrition”, and it is apparent from the questioner’s language that this person feels a full measure of that emotion.

The second dimension of repentance is vidui, “confession”. Such confession does not need to be a public self-flagellation. In fact, it is only necessary to make this confession before God, not before other people. For that reason, the language of our confession in the High Holiday prayers is in the first person plural, not the first-person singular. “Ashamnu, bagadnu… We have abused, we have betrayed…” We stand as a congregation and recite a confession together, an act which simultaneously allows each person to express his remorse and also provides the protection of anonymity, since all present are reciting the identical words. By asking this question, the questioner has fulfilled that dimension of repentance, as well.

The third dimension of repentance is kabbalah le’atid, “resolving [to behave differently] in the future.” Rabbi Moses Maimonides explains that full repentance happens when a person is faced with the identical challenge and successfully resists it. But even if the penitent is already much older than when the sins had been committed, and for lifecycle reasons, full repentance is no longer possible, the full-hearted emotional and intellectual rejection of that sin and the commitment to live the balance of one’s life differently already suffices for the penitent to be considered a “ba’al teshuvah”, i.e. a master of repentance. (Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, “Laws of Repentance” 2:1).

Implicit in the three dimensions of repentance is also the need to conciliate others whom we have sinned against. The questioner may be the principal victim of his or her past behavior; but if there was some betrayal of trust involved, then those other parties ought to be approached and conciliated.

There is one important caveat here: occasionally, it is not possible to bring up a previous sin against an aggrieved party without inflicting greater damage, and in such cases, it is better to remain silent. The penitent in that situation may have to learn to be content with having performed partial repentance, rather than full repentance, and to draw consolation from the fact that at least, the act of repentance is not adding present harm to prior damage.

I urge the questioner to take heart and be consoled. Our God is a forgiving God. We recite in our Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur prayers: “Until man’s dying day, You wait for him to repent, so that You may bless him, ultimately.”

At the conclusion of Yom Kippur, we prepare for the next holiday, the festival of Sukkot (*Tabernacles”). We read the book of Ecclesiastes on that holiday, including the verse, “go, eat your bread in gladness”; The Rabbis commented that when we break our Yom Kippur fast, we may justifiably eat our bread in gladness, for God has forgiven us.

Two relevant Jewish legal prohibitions need to be considered here: 1) not to harm one’s body; 2) not to batter one’s neighbor. The first prohibition is well expressed by Maimonides (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Moral Dispositions and Ethical Conduct, 4:1): “Since by keeping the body in health and vigor, one walks in the ways of God… it is man’s duty to avoid whatever is injurious to the body, and to cultivate habits conducive to health and vigor.” The second is a basic part of Jewish civil law, repeated in all Jewish legal collections beginning with the Covenant Code, Exodus 21:19, and elaborated in the basic Rabbinic lawcode, the Mishnah (Tractate “Damages, part One”—Bava Kamma, chapter 8).

Nonetheless, boxing, while a violent sport, is not automatically to be equated with assault and battery.The basic presupposition of organized sports is that, while they contain some potential risk to health, their internal rules are designed to prevent permanent injury.

One may object that the rules of organized sports often fail in this regard.The first remedy for that, however, is not to declare the sport outlawed in its totality, but more strictly to regulate it. Protective gear needs to be adequate to the forceful contact or collision entailed by entering the sporting contest, and rules against misconduct need to be more strictly enforced.

A blanket prohibition of participation in a particular sport should be reserved for particular sports whose lack of health-conscious groundrules render them beyond repair, such as the gladiatorial games of the Roman era.

A good example of careful attention to protective gear and vigilant referee control of boxing is in the Olympic boxing matches.The goal there is to outpoint the opponent, rather than to render him unconscious.

Organized football may be thought of as an example of a sport that, from a Jewish point of view, requires some adjustment in order to retain its permissible status. Recently, medical attention has been focused on the prevalence of concussion in organized football, including concussions sustained by youthful players in school and junior leagues. Here, not only the protective headgear, but more generally, the overall mindset of the game is in need of improvement. Professional sports constantly review and revise their rules, often to prevent particular kinds of injury, and the ongoing regulation of football needs to take cognizance of these recent medical findings.

Moreover, in some sports, such as ice hockey, one ought to consider regional variations in how the game is played. There is a cultural approval of the players engaging in brawls, as the game is conducted in North America, but no such approval in the Olympic game style of play. The former would be suspect, from a Jewish perspective, but not the latter.

In sum, Jewish tradition bids us look closely at the actual conditions in the particular form of boxing, or other violent sport, under consideration, and to authorize participation, or to withhold consent, based on whether the sport contains adequate safeguards to satisfy the two overall requirements, not to harm oneself or one’s neighbor.

Question: From a Jewish view, what is the true name of G_d? It is my understanding that one name was given to Abraham and another to Moses. Can you please clarify this for me? As an example of the confusion, in the KJV (Christian bible, King James Version) there are three spellings of G_d, LORD and Lord and they each seem to have different meanings. So is there one true name of G_d to call upon and to pray to? Thank you for your response.

Jewish tradition has several names for God, as well as other designations that may be understood as titles or circumlocutions, rather than names. The following is a partial list, including the most widely used names and titles. Hebrew words are presented in English characters, but italicized, for easy identification:

1. According to the Bible, YHWH is the set of four consonants that make up God's personal name. This is apparent from many sources, most famously, God's self-identification at the beginning of the Ten Commandments, "I am YHWH your God..." (Exodus 20:2).
In contrasting the name of God given to Moses with that given to Abraham, the questioner is alluding to Exodus 6:2-3. That is an important piece of evidence for the multiplicity of religious traditions that compose the Bible. In that passage from Exodus, God discloses His personal name, YHWH, as a way of reassuring Moses of the ultimate success of the process of confronting Pharaoh and demanding the freedom for the Hebrew slaves. Having that superior knowledge of God's name, the Bible implies, will confer additional power to Moses' cause. On the other hand, Genesis 4:26 states that the name YHWH came into use in the generation of Enosh, many generations earlier. The stories of the patriarchs in Genesis can be divided on the basis of how they refer to God. Some use the name YHWH, consistent with the point of view of Genesis 4:26, while others refrain from using that name, consistent with the point of view of Exodus 6:2-3. Bible scholars refer to the former set of texts the "J" source, and the latter set, the "E" source.

The consonants YHWH are not vocalized-- i.e. the name is not actually sounded out-- because Judaism developed religious restrictions on pronouncing that name of God. The Rabbis interpreted the Third Commandment, "Do not take the name of YHWH in vain" (Exodus 20: 7), to mean that only the High Priest was permitted to pronounce that name, and only on the Day of Atonement, when standing in the most sacred section of the Temple. Therefore, the Rabbis vocalized the Hebrew letters Yud/ Hey/ Vav/ Hey, composing the consonants of the name YHWH, with the vowels of the word "Adonai", meaning "Lord". That was their way of directing the biblical reader to say "Adonai" instead of pronouncing the actual name of God. In many Bible translations, to differentiate the use of "lord" as a substitute for God's name from any other use of the word "lord", the divine title is rendered in capital letters, thus: LORD.

2. In time, "Adonai" began to feel like a name of God, rather than a title substituted for the name, and therefore, Orthodox Jews do not pronounce it, either, except when praying or reading Torah in the course of worship. They substitute the expression "Ha-Shem", "The Name", for it. Recent, popular Orthodox usage conveys the loose impression that "Ha-Shem" is also a name of God, whereas it is clearly a circumlocution, designed to avoid pronouncing God's name.

As part of the progressive expansion of the force of the commandment not to take God's name in vain, pious Jews would desist from writing God's name unnecessarily, because any document with God's name written on it would need to be disposed of in a manner befitting the holiness of the text. Typically, such documents would be stored in an archive, known as a Genizah, and then would be buried. To avoid writing the Hebrew letters YHWH, traditional, non-Biblical Hebrew texts would use other abbreviations, such as Y"Y, often seen on the printed neckpieces of tallitot (prayer shawls). Other substitutions are the letters D' or H'.

Ultimately, Orthodox Jews extended this expansion of the restrictive force of the tradition still further, desisting from writing the word "God" in languages other than Hebrew as well as in the original Hebrew. That is what accounts for the written form "G-d" instead of "God". Most recently, one can also see "L-RD" instead of "LORD". From the Masorti/ Conservative standpoint, these expansions are unnecessary.

3. In the Bible itself, God is known by other names and titles, too, mostly involving the Hebrew words "El" or "Elohim", meaning "God". In Genesis 1:1, the first reference to God, the generic "Elohim" is used. Later in the Pentateuch, the Bible employs "El-Shaddai", perhaps best translated as "God Almighty", and "El Elyon", translated as "God Most High". From "Elohim", Hebrew generates the standard form "Elohenu", "Our God", as used in the common liturgical form, "Barukh ata Adonai, Eloheynu, Melekh Ha-Olam...", meaning "Blessed are you, O LORD, our God, Ruler of the universe..."

4. The Rabbis, too, writing in the centuries after the conclusion of the Bible, employed various terms to designate the Deity. Three of the most important are Ha-Makom, "the Omnipresent One" (literally, "the place"), Ha-Kadosh Barukh Hu, "The Holy Blessed One", and Ribbono shel olam, "Master of the Universe". These terms are often encountered in rabbinic literature. The first of these is part of the rabbinic formula of condolence, offered to mourners: Ha-Makom yinnachem etkhem...", "May the Omnipresent One comfort you".

5. In the Kabbalah (Jewish mystical tradition), still other names for God became popular. Kudsha Berikh Hu, the Aramaic form of "The Holy Blessed One" came into widespread use, along with a companion term, Shekhinah (God's Presence). Incidentally, the term "Shekinah", thus spelled, is gaining popularity in the Christian evangelical community.

In sum, Jewish tradition treats the act of naming God with great reverence; but it is not accurate to conclude, with the questioner, that there is "one true name of G-d to call upon and to pray to", because the ever-evolving religious civilization of Judaism has found inspiration and solace in different names, and each bears its own authenticity.

Question: I live in Israel, where most people eat “kitniot” on Pesach (Passover) and it can be hard to find non-kitniot products. Can I “break” my family’s tradition of not eating kitniot because it’s so much harder to keep in Israel?

The history of this issue: The prohibition of eating rice and “kitniyot” (basically, legumes) is a position taken by only one authority, Rabbi Yohanan ben Nuri, in the Talmud (Tractate Pesachim 114b). The majority of Talmudic Rabbis disagreed with him, and the early post-Talmudic codifications of the law contain no such prohibition. It first reappears as a stringency adopted by some leading Ashkenazic rabbis, beginning with the “Sefer Mitzvot Katan” in the 13th century. It never achieved a full consensus in the main halakhic codifications, but it ultimately became the standard custom of Ashkenazic Jews. The rationale behind the prohibition is that those foodstuffs could also be used in making a bread-like product. Sephardim have never accepted this argument. Maimonides, following the Talmud, states that the fermentation of legumes produces a kind of "spoilage", but not “chametz”. (Hilkhot Chametz U-Matzah 5:1). In sum, for Sephardim, only the five species of cereal grain that can be used to make matzah, i.e. wheat, barley, rye, oats and spelt, can turn into chametz (Tractate Pesachim, 35a). Even Ashkenazim recognize that kitniyot are not chametz. Although they do not consume those foods on Pesach, they do not remove them from one’s property, as is done with true chametz.

In its ongoing engagement with Jewish law, the Conservative/Masorti movement has retained the Ashkenazic custom, albeit with the understanding that it functions as a custom, not an immutable law. Therefore, the “Committee on Jewish Law and Standards” of the Rabbinical Assembly has authorized some flexibility regarding kitniyot: a vegan may consume them if he deems them vital for health maintenance; peanuts are no longer considered kitniyot, and may be consumed, along with derivatives such as natural, unprocessed peanut butter and peanut oil; and, of course, Sephardim may consume them, since they have no custom barring it. (Summary Index, Committee On Jewish Law and Standards, 7:2, s.v. “Kitniyot”)

The questioner cites convenience as the rationale for contemplating breaking with family tradition. I would not deem that rationale as sufficient. It is not overly difficult to create an ample and satisfying diet for the seven or eight days of Passover, based on the abundance of excellent and seasonal produce available in Israel, and, if the questioner is not a vegan, on the top-quality dairy products available there, let alone eggs, fish, poultry or meat.

There might be other rationales that would be stronger, should other readers raise a similar question. Since the prohibition on the consumption of kitniyot is a matter of family and community tradition, we can acknowledge that some people enter our communities by a process of conversion to Judaism, and are at the point of first founding their family traditions; still others have evolving family identities, because of Sephardic and Ashkenazic partners marrying each other.

The issue of community membership applies on Passover, in a sense analogous to the general issue of membership in a kosher-observant circle. If one intends to invite others to dine on Pesach, and to accept reciprocal invitations, that provides an additional rationale for maintaining a standard of stringency commensurate with one’s communal circle. In theory, a person might see no objection to eating kitniyot, and yet desist, because of these social concerns.

Finally, I would urge that we take a moment to shift focus away from the somewhat technical considerations of the foregoing paragraphs, and to contemplate that the kosher- observant public has witnessed a dramatic and unprecedented proliferation of kosher for Passover products. One could justifiably come away from a shopping trip to a kosher grocery with a nagging sense that we have “overdone it”, with our myriad substitutes for baked goods, breakfast cereals, etc. Among the cherished memories of Passover observance that this author prizes are those of simple fare, enjoyed in the company of loving family and close friends. Regardless of whether one is ultimately more or less stringent with respect to the consumption of kitniyot among Ashkenazic families living in Israel, I would urge that we invest some energies into the mindfulness that will make the consumption of Passover-appropriate foods not an end in itself, but a means towards a savoring of freedom, against towering odds, accomplished with God’s help.

Wishing our questioner, and all of our readers, a “happy and kosher Passover,”

Question: Do we have an obligation to correct misleading media bias when it comes to news coverage of Israel? For example, during rounds of rocket fire from Gaza, some media stations makes it seem like Israel is the aggressor, when they are actually the ones defending themselves against rocket attacks.

Answer: Yes, we do have an obligation to correct falsehoods, and especially those that slander the Jewish people. "Keep far from falsehood!", the Bible commands (Exodus 23:7).

This correcting may be done in various ways, depending on the nature of the social situation at hand. Refuting misimpressions can help the other person in the conversation realize that he or she has been unthinkingly repeating an opinion, believing it to be a consensus, when in fact it is both incorrect and hurtful. Whether to emphasize passion or tact is a situational decision, but the guiding value is the defense of fellow Jews against prejudicial attack.

Whether speaking to an acquaintance or writing a letter to a newspaper editor, it is important to have reliable information at one’s disposal. There are, fortunately, many good sources of information on the Israeli “matzav” (political situation).

None of the above is intended to convey the impression that Israel is beyond some legitimate criticism, but much of the criticism of Israel is in fact illegitimate. It ignores context, fails to hold both sides of the conflict to comparable standards, and often makes excuses for the immoral acts of Israel’s enemies.

In sum, one should weigh one’s words to guard against diminishing the effectiveness of one’s well-meaning speech, but certainly speak out whenever it can have even some good effect on the public or on fellow defenders of Israel.

Question: We live in Germany (I am American, my husband is German, working for a German airline). After various postings to foreign countries, we are now here permanently with our 12-year-old daughter. We have purchased a piece of property and will be building soon on it. Currently there is an old house on the property, in which many generations of the same family were born and raised, until the remaining elderly owner passed on with no heirs, just 1 year ago. The property reverted to the state, from whom we purchased it.
Before the bulldozers come I would like to:
1. Pay tribute to the almost 100 years this family dwelt in the place. All who enter the old house express that it feels warm and inviting, with an overgrown but lovely garden.
2. Address any Nazi connections which may have existed. There is no indication of this in the deceased's history (I've googled him and asked many neighbors) but he was of that generation.
3. After the old house and yard have been removed and prepared for building, I would also like to bless the property prior to building.
To summarize, I am interested in an appropriate Jewish:
1. dedication
2. acknowledgement of possible misdeeds
3. property blessing
My upbringing was as Conservative Jew in San Diego, later practicing Reform.

We live in Germany (I am American, my husband is German, working for a German airline). After various postings to foreign countries, we are now here permanently with our 12 yr old daughter. We have purchased a piece of property and will be building soon on it. Currently there is an old house on the property, in which many generations of the same family were born and raised, until the remaining elderly owner passed on with no heirs, just 1 year ago. The property reverted to the state, from whom we purchased it. Before the bulldozers come I would like to: 1. Pay tribute to the almost 100 years this family dwelled in the place. All who enter the old house express that it feels warm and inviting, with an overgrown but lovely garden. 2. Address any Nazi connections which may have existed. There is no indication of this in the deceased's history (i've googled him and asked many neighbors) but he was of that generation. 3. After the old house and yard have been removed and prepared for building, I would also like to bless the property prior to building. To summarize, I am interested in an appropriate Jewish: 1. dedication 2. acknowledgement of possible misdeeds 3. property blessing My upbringing was as Conservative Jew in San Diego, later practicing Reform.

The prophet Jeremiah’s inaugural vision included the mandate “to uproot and tear down, to destroy and to raze, to build and to plant” (Jeremiah 1:10). The work of removal of the old precedes the work of emplacement of the new. Conceptually, the first task is to “de-nazify” the property, if indeed any residue of Nazism inheres in it. One might give the former owner the benefit of the doubt, based on the research of the questioner, but it is easy to understand that misgivings endure. The collusion of the entire German people in the work of Hitler, up through the early years of the Second World War, is unfortunately all too well documented. So many “anti-Nazis” only became so when the tide of war turned against Germany, or even later still, when they reinvented their past to succeed in the post-war era. Even so, we should be guided by the maxim of Deuteronomy 24:16, “Parents must not be put to death for children, nor children be put to death for parents: a person shall be put to death only for his own crime.” If the previous owner was too young to have taken part in the Nazi era, then he was innocent, and his house was not at all implicated. On the other hand, if indeed the house sheltered Nazi supporters, and made them comfortable while they played a role in the crimes of that era, then the cleansing that the questioner has in mind is apt. But there is no question of “judicial guilt”. A house is a shell, until people invest it with values that make it a home.

I recommend creating a liturgy of dedication upon the beginning of the actual work of construction, after the site has been cleared. It is correct and praiseworthy to create moments of dedication and consecration. Certainly, the occasion of preparing a new domicile is one of life’s important transitions, and worthy of spiritual commemoration. The Hebrew termchanukkat ha-bayyit, “dedication of the house”, goes back to the Bible, and I recommend including Psalm 30, the “Psalm of David, for the dedication of the house” as part of the questioner’s own liturgy of dedication. Upon entering the completed new home, the questioner is well advised to adopt one of the existing liturgies accompanying the mitzvah of placing a mezuzah on the doorpost. All of these liturgies make Deuteronomy 6:4-9 central: Hear, o Israel, the LORD is our God, the LORD alone… You shall love the LORD your God… Take to heart these instructions… inscribe them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” I personally recommend the fine compilation of spiritual texts in the Rabbinical Assembly Rabbi’s Manual.

The central Jewish teaching regarding living nobly despite our human imperfections is teshuvah, “repentance”. Full repentance, as Maimonides teaches (Laws of Repentance, chapter 2), is the conscious decision to change one’s life, actualized in the proper decision when faced with the same problem. Living on the property that the questioner describes could well serve as a spur to mindfulness, a reminder that the Jew can best respond to the Holocaust by living out what the Holocaust survivor and Jewish theologian, Emil Fackenheim, has described as “the 614th commandment—thou shalt not grant Hitler any posthumous victories.” That would include a life of Jewish engagement, because Hitler attempted to destroy the religion as well as the people; a consecration of energies to defend the Jewish people from its current threats, which are all too real; and a posture of readiness to prevent the plague of bigotry against any group from recurring.

Question: What is the meaning of the Hebrew letters "peh nun" (PN) on a tombstone?

These Hebrew letters are an abbreviation, and are often marked as such by the inclusion of diagonal marks between the letters, thus: P"N. They stand for the words "poh nikbar" (masculine) or "poh nikberah" (feminine), meaning "here lies buried".

A poetic and less common variant is P"T, "poh tamun" or "poh temunah", meaning, "here lies hidden".

It is traditionally correct to include one of these designations when a marker is placed on an occupied grave. When putting up a marker, without a body being buried in that grave, the letters are omitted. That is done when there is no body to bury, such as when someone has been lost at sea, or in an all-consuming fire, and there are no available bodily remains to lay to rest.

Other Hebrew information that it is correct to include on a gravestone include the name of the deceased, including the parents' names, for example: "Ploni ben Almoni", "x, son of y"-- "bat" for "daughter", instead of "ben", when a woman is buried. It is also proper to include the Hebrew date of death, known as the "yahrzeit" date. Finally, on the bottom of the gravestone, it is customary to write five letters, an abbreviation of a five-word prayer: T' N' TS' B' H', standing for "tehi nishmato (nishmatah, for a woman) tserurah bitsror ha-chayyim, "let his/her soul be bound up in the bundle of life eternal."

Question: My Jewish high school recently announced plans to spy on student's computer usage by requiring us to install software letting them remotely watch and block computer use. What does Jewish law have to say about this violation of our privacy?

My Jewish high school recently announced plans to spy on student's computer usage by requiring us to install software letting them remotely watch and block computer use. What does Jewish law have to say about this violation of our privacy?

This inquiry, as formulated, begs the question of whether the school’s practice is in fact a violation of the students’ privacy. American law would reject that inference. Companies whose employees use company computers have the legal right to monitor their employees’ use of the company property. Schools enjoy analogous rights to monitor the use of their school property. So if the students in this Jewish high school are using school computers, they do not, in fact, have a legitimate expectation that their communications will be private under all circumstances.

One would wish to have heard the school’s explanation of the motivation for its policy. Is the school taking this step to remedy some prior abuse of the student use of the computers? Have students been posting comments about others that violate the Jewish strictures against evil speech (leshon ha-ra?) Has the student use of the computers in the school setting been unrelated to the enterprise of learning to the point of constituting a waste of time consecrated for torah study (bittul torah)? Have students been accessing sights that disseminate indecency? All of these situations would constitute a student abuse of the privilege granted to use the computers, and would merit a closer monitoring of computer use by responsible school authorities.

There are, to be sure, other dimensions of this question. In Judaism, there is a distinction between strict, law-abiding behavior, (shurat ha-din) and behavior that exceeds the minimum legal requirement, in pursuit of an ethical ideal (lifnim mi-shurat ha-din). In my judgment, the school is operating in accordance with shurat ha-din in monitoring student use of school computers. But as a Jewish educational institution, the school would be wise to incorporate additional ethical values into its policy—and indeed, the question does not present all the relevant facts, so perhaps the school is doing so.

Classroom schooling is a subset of the larger enterprise of education. How students interact on the playground, in the cafeteria, and on the various communications channels that are proliferating in our day, are all dimensions of the educational enterprise. A Jewish school would rightly want to guide students to develop into ethically sensitive and respectful adults. It may be necessary, as a measure to correct various abuses, to have the right to monitor computer use. But the school ought to do what it can to respect privacy, whose importance is unquestioned within Judaism. Rabbenu Gershom, the leading Rabbi of Ashkenazic Jewry a millennium ago, issued a ban on reading others’ mail, and that ban is at least partially relevant here, if not as a prohibition against the school’s policy, then certainly as a caution against the school’s potential abuse of its monitoring rights and responsibilities.

I would hope and expect that the school makes clear to the students the guidelines for computer use and that it reassures them that administrators and teachers do not intend to “snoop” indiscriminately.

By analogy,” tweens” and teens often insist on the privacy of their bedrooms, within their parental homes. Parents, strictly speaking, have a right to enter those rooms, despite any signage that the children post. In certain situations, indeed, they have a responsibility to enter those rooms. However, it is a wise parent who guides his or her child to understand the parameters of privacy, and who models a respect for privacy as far as other values permit, instead of casually or routinely ignoring the developing youngster’s need for privacy.

As a science museum with an exhibition that has a human brain in it what is our obligation to alert orthodox Jewish visitors to its presence?

It is somewhat out of the ordinary to have Jewish Values Online, which regularly solicits answers from across the Jewish denominational spectrum, address a question such as this one, whose domain is specifically dealing with one denomination, in this case, Orthodox Jews. The most important answer to this question ought to come from an Orthodox respondent.

With all due deference to Orthodox Jewish colleagues, therefore, I will deal with a more general set of implications of the question:

1) The key Jewish concept involving a dead body is k’vod ha-met, “the dignity of the deceased”. This concept leads to various Jewish mandates, such as the prohibition of embalming the body of a Jew, the speedy burial of the Jewish dead, and so on. This concept would militate against the display of a bodily organ.

But this general principle is modified by the following consideration:

2)There is an inherent and voluntarily restriction in the scope of Jewish law: with few exceptions, known in Jewish texts as “the laws of the children of Noah”, Jewish laws are meant to bind only Jews. For example, Judaism considers the prohibition against murder to have been given by God to all of humanity. But most other laws, such as the Sabbath, the dietary restrictions, the laws pertaining to religious ceremonial, are part of the “Sinai covenant”, not the “Noahide covenant”, and they bind only Jews. Therefore, the commandment not to leave a bodily organ unburied would not apply to bodily organs of non-Jews.

3)Jews of priestly descent, “kohanim”, are specifically prohibited from being under the same roof as a Jewish corpse.

4)Education of the public is a worthy goal, and one can readily construct a religious rationale for wishing to educate the public about the human body. We praise God for having created the human with wisdom, and we dedicate a prayer to reflecting upon the intricacy of the human body’s design. This is known as the “asher yatzar” prayer. Even so, it ought to be possible to promote the scientific knowledge and the spiritual appreciation of the human body while still remaining faithful to the general principle that the bodies of the dead deserve speedy burial.

5)It is also a general principle of Jewish law that we must go the extra mile to avoid misleading people. “Keep far from a false matter”—Exodus 23:7. Therefore, since some people’s sensibilities would be affronted by being in the presence of a bodily organ on display—there are both Jews and Gentiles who would feel strongly about this-- the organizers of the science museum ought to post accurate signage outside the display hall. Considering point #3, it would even be correct to post signage outside the museum building.

Balancing these factors, I would argue that a Jew ought not seek to prohibit a science museum from displaying a human organ, but could well communicate to the museum our tradition’s preference for the burial of human body parts and the substitution of molds and other replicas for educational purposes. If the museum opts to put human body parts on display, Jewish values would lead us to urge the museum, minimally, to alert the viewing public of the contents of that display, to allow members of the public to avoid entering that room, if so desired.

Question: I am a soon to be converted Jew by Choice. The problem is, practicing Judaism is really causing problems in my marriage with my non-practicing Jewish husband. I realized how important religion was to me when we had our first child. In the last two years, our marriage has been fraught with arguments because he doesn't want to raise our children Jewish. He did participate in a baby naming, doesn't sulk everytime I light Shabbat candles as he once did and has agreed to a Jewish preschool, but I still feel like it's an uphill battle to raise our kids Jewish. He had trauma in his youth (abuse) that occurred at his shul for which he will not seek counseling. Am I right to keep pushing like this? I certainly want to be sensitive to my husband but feel like I'm repressing my own identity and the Jewish identity of our children.

I am a soon to be converted Jew by Choice. The problem is, practicing Judaism is really causing problems in my marriage with my non-practicing Jewish husband. I realized how important religion was to me when we had our first child. In the last two years, our marriage has been fraught with arguments b/c he doesn't want to raise our children Jewish. He did participate in a baby naming, doesn't sulk everytime I light Shabbat candles as he once did and has agreed to a Jewish preschool, but I still feel like it's an uphill battle to raise our kids Jewish. He had trauma in his youth (abuse) that occurred at his shul for which he will not seek counseling. Am I right to keep pushing like this? I certainly want to be sensitive to my husband but feel like I'm repressing my own identity and the Jewish identity of our children.

Before moving to concrete suggestions, I would like to offer you some validation. Your adult decision to embrace Judaism is highly praiseworthy. I hope that you can maintain your Jewish loyalties, even as you negotiate the important issue of achieving “sh’lom bayyit” (domestic peace).

It is not at all uncommon, in my experience as a Conservative/ Masorti rabbi, to see a Jew by choice have greater enthusiasm for our religion that her spouse. (Less frequently, the husband is the Jew by choice, but there, too, the pattern can apply.)

It would be lovely if you could “have it all”, in the sense of the Jewish household you crave, plus a willing, happy husband who is progressing in step with your spiritual growth. But that is not likely, and certainly not in the short run. If your husband is reacting against a strongly negative personal experience, you are correct that psychological counseling would be the best recourse. If, for now, he continues to resist that step, you may want to concentrate your efforts on showing him that the experiences you enjoy are not replications of his unhappy experiences. Not every Jewish synagogue authority is the person of his nightmares. Even conceding that your surmise about his having endured abuse is well-founded, if only for the sake of argument, that chapter was from a different place and time than the life that you are leading.

I would look for steps that will accentuate the beauty and joy of Judaism, to help overcome the resistance that your husband carries from earlier formative experiences. Your question indicates some movement on his part towards accepting your devotion to Judaism, and that is a positive sign Patience and selectivity on your part could help him to see Judaism with your positive perspective. You would be well advised to focus on those Jewish ceremonies and rituals that are the most obviously enjoyable. With the holidays approaching, there could be many beautiful and easy-to-appreciate moments, such as apples and honey for the Rosh Hashanah eve dinner, decorating a sukkah and enjoying al fresco dining with friends and family, participating in the “happy pandemonium” of a Simchat Torah parade.

In short, the answer is not “all or nothing”. Marriage is about compromise. Less than what you want, and more than his default position, is an honorable place, at least for now. May Heaven bless you and your children, and over time, may the example of engaged and joyous Jewish living that you exemplify help to heal your husband, as well.

Do you think that sometimes there are things that a person should simply not do because it would compromise their beliefs too much? Or is there always a workaround?

At one level, the question can be answered succintly: Judaism does not permit the bending of every rule. Classically, the tradition phrases the absolute nature of some commandments in this way: In the case of three commandments, “do not murder; do not commit sexual crimes; do not worship idols”, the ruling is “yehhareg ve-lo ya’avor”, which means, “a person should allow himself to be killed rather than to transgress.” In Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5, we are told that the reason why the Bible tells the story of our common descent from a first human couple (Adam and Eve) is so that no one could say, ”my ancestor is greater than yours.” The implication is that we are not allowed to murder another, under any circumstances, because we have no greater ultimate standing than the other person.

In the course of Jewish history, our tradition has sometimes extended that principle widely. During the anti-Jewish persecutions of the later Middle Ages, Ashkenazic teachers (i.e. religious leaders of the Jewish people living in the Christian lands of Northern Europe) specified that the limitation of martyrdom to only those three laws was a general rule, but that in times of persecution, every single law was so important that a Jew ought to submit to martyrdom rather than transgress. Clearly, that is a more extreme statement than our general, contemporary understanding of the issue, although the historical climate generating that statement is understandable.

In any case, the tradition is clear and univocal in answer to this question: not every law can be situationally reframed so as to justify non-compliance.

At another level, I suspect that the question reflects the popularity of the situational ethics that have become a significant element in some quarters, in recent times. We respond against the rigid and inflexible nature of some expositions of religion, by moving in the other direction, seeking to find the flexibility within religious tradition itself.

And yet, even when reacting against excessive inflexibility, it is a mistake to say that everything is negotiable. Implicit in the basic Jewish notion of God as the author of the mitzvoth (the commandments) is the understanding that a higher standard compels and constrains our behavior.

When aspects of the culture reinforce the message “anything goes”, it becomes all the more important for Judaism to insist on the counter-cultural message, “God commands. Much is permitted, but not all. So not just anything goes.”

Question: I heard a friend saying that we are at "the end of days" because the world has gotten so crazy, the weather seems to be changing, rules of morality and nature seem to have gone haywire. Do we as Jews believe in an end of days? Do we know when it is?
[Ed. Note: see somewhat similar question at: http://www.jewishvaluesonline.org/question.php?id=357]

Question: I heard a friend saying that we are at "the end of days" because the world has gotten so crazy, the weather seems to be changing, rules of morality and nature seem to have gone haywire. Do we as Jews believe in an end of days? Do we know when it is?

Answer:

Judaism does have a notion that, in the future, there will be an “end of days”, meaning a decisive change from the conditions of history as we have thus far experienced it. The biblical prophets, including Amos, chapter 9 and Isaiah, chapter 2, offer moving descriptions of that time—a time of peace and prosperity, when the Jewish people will live, unmolested, in their homeland of Israel.

However, while we have entertained many speculations on the subject, our tradition has never arrived at a consensus regarding when that time might come about, nor about what will precipitate it, nor, again, about how much will be different at that time. A classical source for these thoughts is the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin, chapter 11. Perhaps the most pragmatic of the many ideas collected there is the dictum of the third-century Rabbi Abba (known respectfully as “Rav”): “All the appointed times for the appearance of the Messiah have already ceased, and the matter depends only upon repentance and good deeds. (Sanhedrin 97 b). The rabbi was responding to the various attempts to calculate when God might send the Messiah, and his words reveal his basic orientation: the course of history lies ultimately in our hands. God has created us with free will, and history is the result of our interactions. It is our responsibility to move history to a better plane. We have not yet accomplished that goal (“all the appointed times have ceased”), but we could still do so.

Throughout our sad history of suffering as a religious minority, Jews have often been tempted to believe that the “end”, meaning a redemptive end of our exile and persecution, was at hand. Each time we have succumbed to such temptation, the result has been disillusionment, defection of Jews from our community, and renewed misery for the Jewish survivors. Therefore, the Rabbis came to discourage the attempt to calculate when the “end of days” would begin.

In the twelfth century, Maimonides composed his “Epistle to Yemen” to fortify the Jews there against precisely that danger. Again, in the 1570’s, when the Jews of Italy were falling prey to messianic wishful thinking on account of their persecution at the hands of the Church during the upheavals of the Protestant Reformation, Rabbi Azariah dei Rossi composed his Me’or Einayim to dissuade the Jews of his society from repeating that historic error. We could multiply examples of this sort.

In reply to the questioner: I would advise you to tell your friend that people have long pointed to extraordinary phenomena as a sign of an “end of days”, and they have been uniformly mistaken, over and over again. But I would also urge you to share with your friend the thought that, in our tradition, people can and must do their best to bring an end to the violence and bigotry that have characterized so much of history until now.

Let me add a postscript: the recent media attention over the Christian claim that the world would end on May 21, 2011—obviously, another erroneous claim—shows that Jews are not the only ones to engage in these speculations. The record of failed Christian attempts to predict the end of history, following their own sacred writings, is even more filled with self-delusion than the Jewish record. Perhaps it can most charitably be understood as yet another manifestation of the human desire for a “happy ending” to the sad story of human aggression. The yearning for better is a good thing. But it would be more productive to invest energy in positive changes, than to look for superficially appealing number patterns in sacred texts.

Question: Watching the Royal Wedding, I was struck by how different it is to a Jewish wedding. Traditional Jewish ceremonies seem not to include vows to each other, for example. How can that be? Isn't that the whole point of the ceremony?

The traditional Jewish wedding ceremony includes the ritual of the groom handing of ketubah, a written document memorializing his promises, to the bride. Those promises essentially amount to financial support. The groom does not repeat those vows, but they are binding because witnesses sign the document. So the vows do exist, but in written form.

Commonly, modern American versions of the ketubah expand upon those promises in two ways. First, the English paraphrase (obviously, not a straight translation) often speaks of emotional pledges, for example, to love, honor and cherish, as well as behavioral promises such as support. Second, the English paraphrase often includes a statement of the bride’s own promises to the groom.

Some of the differences between orthodox and non-orthodox wedding ceremonies today relate to this mutuality of obligation. In the Talmudic, pre-modern template, the man betroths the woman by presenting her with an object of worth—that is the antecedent of the modern “wedding ring”. The woman, in exchange for that consideration, consents to marry the man. But in many non-orthodox modern variations of the traditional ceremony, the man and the woman “marry each other”. It is no longer the case that one is the active, and the other the reactive, partner in the ceremony. Rings are exchanged (this is expressed by the phrase, “double ring ceremony”).

Granted, In the Conservative/ Masorti ritual, some of the traditional asymmetry is preserved. Upon placing a ring on the bride’s right index finger, the groom recites the Hebrew original of the phrase, “behold, you are betrothed to me by this ring, in accordance with the rite of Moses and Israel.” The bride does not recite the parallel phrase, but rather says, upon presenting her groom with his ring, “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine”—a phrase from the Biblical Song of Songs, rather than from the legal tradition of the Talmud.

Nonetheless, mutuality is the overall message of the typical, double-ring wedding ceremony in Conservative/ Masorti praxis. At the end of the service, the officiant pronounces the couple, not “man and wife”, as was once the norm—borrowed from English Protestant liturgy—but rather “husband and wife”. The wife is not the auxiliary of the man, but the full and equal partner of the husband.

Why do some people hold 7 days of shiva for a close relative and some hold 3 days?

“Shiv’ah”, literally “seven”, meaning a traditional seven days of post-funeral mourning, is an ancient Jewish practice, customary behavior practiced since time out of mind. The earliest rabbinic codification of a seven days’ period of confinement in the home following the burial of a loved one does not mandate such behavior, but rather assumes it:

“[In the case of ]one who buries his dead [i.e. his close relative]

three days prior to the festival, the decree of “seven” is annulled.”

(Mishnah, Tractate Mo’ed Katan 3:5)

That is to say, if one has buried a close relative, then observed three days of the seven, at which time the festival commences, the mourner is allowed to omit the balance of the seven days of confinement. The mourner moves to the next stage of the mourning process, the thirty days period following the burial, in which less onerous restrictions upon behavior apply.. (Incidentally, in its later elaboration, Jewish law did not follow the ruling of the Mishnah in this particular case: the seven-days’ confinement would be concluded early, with the arrival of the festival, even in the case of a burial concluded only one hour prior to the festival.)

In the Gemara, the Rabbinic expositors of the Mishnahs sought to ground the seven-days’ mourning in biblical texts. For example, they quoted the verse, “I [God] will turn your festivals into mourning” (Amos 8:10) and argued that, just as Passover and Sukkot are seven days in length, so is the period of mourning of seven days’ duration. (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Mo’ed Katan, 20a) But the Rabbis themselves acknowledged that such derivations do not have the force of absolute logical inferences, but are simply “asmakhtot”, meaning “Scriptural supports”, for the practice. Ultimately, the duration of seven days for the post-funeral confinement rests upon custom.

The abridgement of the seven days’ period to three days is a by-product of the history of German and Austrian Jews in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The Austrian Emperor and the various German rulers promulgated a series of edicts mandating that the Jews of their realms delay the burial of the dead for 48 or 72 hours following the cessation of vital signs. These “delayed burial” edicts were based on the fear that the Jews, whose customary practice was to bury the dead within the day, were perhaps burying the comatose, and thus committing murder. Traditionalist Jews resisted this infringement upon their internal autonomy, but by the 1790’s, a group of Modernist Jews in Berlin had created a “Gesellschaft der Freunde (Society of Friends)” to handle burials in the “modern” manner, complete with a three-day’s delay between the cessation of vital signs and burial. This was the occasion of much tension in the Jewish community of the day. In one instance, the traditionalist chevra kaddisha (burial society), which controlled the cemetery, sought to block a modernist funeral, and the modernists called the police to enforce their right to use the cemetery.

In 1846, when the Reform-minded rabbis of Germany met in Breslau, for their third annual synod, they passed a resolution calling for the abridgement of the seven-day period to three days. Among their justifications was the argument that, unlike pre-modern times, when burial took place on the same day as death, in their own day, the burial was delayed by three days; hence, a seven-day mourning period would extend the dislocation of the mourner’s life beyond the originally-envisioned seven days. The rabbis at Breslau also pointed to the nuances within the original Talmudic discussion of the seven days of post-funeral mourning (Tractate Mo’ed Katan 21b), where the restrictions on the mourners’ conduct during the first three days were regarded as more stringent than the norms applicable during the second half of the week. Nonetheless, that interpretation of the Talmud was novel and perhaps tendentious. It seems plausible that the Reform decision was in fact caused not by a changing understanding of the teachings of traditional texts, but rather by the pressure felt by Jews, living in a country with a notably strong work ethic, not to diverge too greatly from the mourning rhythms of the Christian majority. In German Christian practice, a wake, followed by a funeral, constituted the entire time off from work. (For a fuller discussion of the history recounted in these paragraphs, please consult the author’s doctoral dissertation, Modernity and Mortality: The Transformation of European Jewish Responses to Death, 1750-1850 (University Microfilms, 1989).

In America today, more Conservative/Masorti families are opting to observe the briefer period of three days, or some other period less than one week. This has not been a formal decision of the movement, however, which continues to teach the importance of giving the bereaved a week to adjust to the reality of their situation. In 1991, The Jewish Theological Seminary, the preeminent educational institution of Conservative/ Masorti Judaism, released a film, Saying Kaddish, starring Tova Feldshuh, that promoted the psychologically therapeutic value of observing the traditional rites of mourning, implicitly including the traditional period of seven days.

Question: What is the Jewish response - besides of course helping those in need - to environmental tragedy, like the earthquake and tsunami in Japan? For starters - How do we understand a God who wreaks this kind of havoc on His creations?

This question focuses on the theological issues, and that will be the focus of my answer. But before turning away the practical dimension, let me express agreement with the questioner: it is of course a Jewish response to help those in need, the injured, the homeless, the impoverished, and the bereaved. Moreover, as Jews, we are bidden to help such people, whether they are Jewish or not. All of this is consistent with our mandate to “seek peace and pursue it” (Psalm 34: 15) We may have a higher level of obligation to assist the needy among our own people, because ultimately, there are only a few of us who will prioritize their needs, but we are never excused from responding to the pressing needs of more extended branches of the human family. This, too, is a Jewish value, given classical expression in the core text of Rabbinic Judaism:

Therefore was humanity created from a single ancestor, to teach you that…

whoever saves a single human life is reckoned by Scripture as having saved an

entire world; and [for the purpose of] peace among God’s creatures, that no one

will say to his fellow-man, ‘my father was greater than your father’.

(Mishnah Sanhedrin 4: 5)

Nonetheless, the practical dimension of our response—helping those in need—is not to be totally separated from the theological dimension. Indeed, in my understand of God—my theology, one of the several found within the framework of Masorti/ Conservative Judaism-- the mandate to help each other is strengthened by the understanding that God has created a world in which humans are not only mortal, but so very fragile, and that the forces of nature can so capriciously overwhelm us. The same God who has made us so vulnerable to the vast power of nature, has given us testimonies, teaching us to be holy; and the holiest deed is to help each other.

As expressed by the Psalmist:

The floods rise up, O LORD,

The floods raise up their roaring,

The floods will surge, will rage;

But above the voice of the mighty waters

Awesome is the LORD on high.

Your testimonies are very sure,

Holiness becomes Your house,

O LORD, for ever (Psalm 93:4-5)

Since people are by nature incomparably weaker than the forces of nature, we need to be especially mindful of the danger to which we expose ourselves by our own arrogance. After enduring many earthquakes, Japan has instituted a commendably strict building code, and in fact, despite the severity of the earthquake, there were relatively few losses to buildings collapsing from the earthquake itself. Other parts of the world have yet to internalize that lesson. After experiencing tsunamis, why do we rebuild in danger zones, rather than recognizing the likelihood of a repeat of those disasters? Why did Americans, knowing that hurricanes are inevitable, pursue land development policies that drained the wetlands protecting New Orleans from hurricane devastation? Some of the suffering that arises from natural forces is in fact attributable to human greed, short-sightedness and hubris. Again: the nuclear engineers who built the Japanese power plants assumed that their walls would sufficiently contain any conceivable tsunami, and consequently, they positioned the motors powering their water circulating pumps in a basement of their facility. Had they only doubted that their walls could never be breached, they could have easily placed those motors on higher ground, and the current nightmare of core meltdown and the disastrous release of radioactivity could have been avoided, despite the earthquake and the tsunami.

But even after we have correctly criticized humans for their own mistakes, and for their mistaken belief in the sufficiency of their technological achievements, the fundamental issue of theodicy—of God’s justice—remains troubling.

The problem that this question highlights is known, in philosophical discourse, as “the problem of natural evil”. There have been not only books, but entire libraries, composed to respond to this, and still the problem endures; so it is not to be expected that my reflection will resolve the question to everyone’s satisfaction. But, since “truth is the seal of the Holy One”, I offer my sincere meditation on this subject:

The problem of natural evil places us on the horns of a dilemma. If God is all good, then would God want to create a world filled with pain and suffering? And if God is all-powerful, then would God not prevent such a world from arising? So does not the existence of pain and suffering argue against the existence of God, thus conceived?

Many traditional answers attempt to blunt the first horn of the dilemma. Upon seeing a man die a senseless death, while obeying the biblical commandment to spare the mother bird, in the act of collecting her eggs for food—a commandment concerning which Torah promises long life—Rabbi Elisha lost his faith, but Rabbi Akiva, who believed that “everything God does, is for good (Talmud Bavli, Berakhot 60b) argued that God would indeed grant long life to that boy “in the world to come”. (Talmud Bavli, Hagigah 15b). A main current of Jewish tradition (and an even more prominent part of Christian tradition) has amplified the doctrine of a “world to come”, where the injustices of this world will be set right. Thus, what seems like needless pain and suffering in this world is only a partial picture.

That answer can neither be verified nor falsified, because of the limits of our earthly knowledge. But it is worth stating that the Hebrew Bible, while filled with the faithful appreciation for God’s power, does not commit itself to Rabbi Akiva’s world-view. Rather, the Bible speaks of God as renewing the earth with new generations (Psalm 104:29-30), and remains largely silent on the question of the individual’s afterlife. We may therefore recognize that Jewish tradition is not monolithic; it contains different perspectives on this point.

Personally, while filled respect for Rabbi Akiva’s achievement, I am not uplifted by that particular answer, and so I have looked further. Other currents of Jewish thought offer alternatives:

Following the lead of the modern theologian, Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, Rabbi Harold Kushner has argued that God creates a world where pain and suffering are simply part of the natural condition; it is fruitless to expend our strength in pondering “why”? Rabbi Kushner tacitly retreats from the proposition that God is all-powerful, while reasserting God’s goodness. God grieves with us when we suffer, and God motivates us to help each other. Rabbi Kushner has often made the point that the book he has written, “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”, is not entitled “Why Bad Things Happen…” because he claims no special knowledge of that. I would add, amen: neither do I.

Note that in Rabbi Kushner’s formulation, the theological awareness of God’s non-omnipotence is closely connected to the “practical” impulse to help each other in response to suffering. That is how we serve as God’s partners for good in this world.

Permit me a more personal expression, still in response to the question: The problem of natural evil is one that I have grappled with, existentially, while parenting a developmentally disabled child. Many well-meaning people have offered me Rabbi-Akiva-type answers: her disability makes her sensitive; her disability brings out the good in others; her disability brings out the good in me, and so on; but none of those answers assuage the core of pain, nor refute the point of the theological question, which I share with the questioner.

My scientific studies have dovetailed with my religious meditations to shape my own ultimate response, which follows the pathways of Rabbis Kaplan and Kushner. Unlike the determinism of early modern science, scientists today emphasize the role of indeterminacy in the world. At the quantum level, the most fundamental level of physical reality, only probabilities, not certainties, characterize existence. And even at the macroscopic levels, chaos is an essential feature of physical systems.

I accept that this chaos is a real part of the world that God has created, just as I accept that gravity and electromagnetism describe so much of the behavior of real objects. This chaos is ultimately the cause of the mitochondrial DNA mutation that resulted in my daughter’s disability. I do not see it as any part of God’s specific providence, but rather, as a feature of the world, that I have no choice but to accept.

Or perhaps I do—we do—have a choice? We could choose not to believe in God, because the world contains the kind of pain that a good, omnipotent, God would not have brought into being. But, to paraphrase Rabbi Milton Steinberg, another student of Rabbi Kaplan’s, such a world-view would explain away the problem of natural evil, but would leave us incapable to explaining the good and the altruistic that also exist in the world.

Ultimately, when we choose our beliefs, we choose them because they help us to organize our world, and we accept that each system of beliefs has some strong points and other weak points. The weak points of atheism are such that I do not find it an acceptable organizing principle for life as I know it. Conversely, the weak points of a fundamentalist system, one that fails to acknowledge the reality of the pain and suffering that exist in this world, are such that I need to look further. The idea that we can not ultimately understand why God has created such a world, but we can know that God is NOT punishing us for sins when we fall prey to the harshness and indifference of nature, remains for me the best theological alternative, even if it leaves much that one would want to know.

One last point: Judaism has famously—if only partially accurately—been described as “a religion of deed, not of creed.” There are, indeed, points of belief that characterize most streams of Judaism, but the consequences of dissenting from those points are different in Judaism than they are in a faith-based religious system. Let us allow ourselves the freedom to disagree on speculative conclusions of theology, when such disagreement is necessary, and nonetheless, to conduct our lives in the light of the humane and ennobling values taught by our religion.

Question: How should the Jewish community respond to the chaos and brutality in Libya? On one hand, Gaddafi is murdering innocent people and we, of all people, should not be silent. On the other hand, many of those innocent people are from groups like Al Qaeda that actively seek to destroy Jews and Israel. Does our sense of human responsibility extend also to those who actively hate us?

How should the Jewish community respond to the chaos and brutality in Libya? On one hand, Gaddafi is murdering innocent people and we, of all people, should not be silent. On the other hand, many of those innocent people are from groups like Al Qaeda that actively seek to destroy Jews and Israel. Does our sense of human responsibility extend also to those who actively hate us?

The murder of civilians protesting the Gaddafi dictatorship is an absolute evil, regardless of the political affiliation of those civilians. Even if the protesters—or some of them-- are themselves guilty of anti-semitism, Gaddafi’s actions are worthy of absolute condemnation.

In this respect, the situation in Libya is not analogous to the events that unfolded in Egypt last month. The Egyptian dictator had, despite his other flaws, maintained at least a “cold peace” with Israel, and some, although not all, of the protesters against his rule were avowed Islamists, seeking to re-ignite the active jihad against the Jewish State. But in Libya, the dictator does not have even partially redeeming policies. He actively fomented and supported anti-Israel and anti-Western terror, on many fronts, for decades. American reprisals forced him to renounce (at least openly) his nuclear ambitions, but he has no serious claim to being a stabilizing force in that troubled region.

As of today (March 2, 2011) the future of the Libyan revolution is in question, with Gaddafi fighting back and murdering his own people. Without holding unrealistic, fond hopes regarding the posture of a possible post-Gaddafi Libya, one may echo the prophet Isaiah in condemning the monumental evil of Gaddafi:

Question: With all the talk about democracy vs Islamic rule in Tunisia and Egypt, I was wondering how very different our own religion was.... If our very religious extremists had their way, would Israel be a democracy? How can we reconcile the modern ideal of democracy with the (seemingly) clear preference in our own texts for autocratic rule (monarchy)?

With all the talk about democracy vs Islamic rule in Tunisia and Egypt, I was wondering how very different our own religion was.... If our very religious extremists had their way, would Israel be a democracy? How can we reconcile the modern ideal of democracy with the (seemingly) clear preference in our own texts for autocratic rule (monarchy)?

Apart from the questioner’s observation about the polarity of democracy versus Islamic rule, which is not a question to be answered from a standpoint of expertise in Judaism, the question divides into two parts: (1) the threat of religious extremism to Jewish and humane values; and (2) the political ideals of Judaism: monarchical or democratic?

(1) The questioner correctly sees a threat in Jewish religious extremism. This threat is more damaging to the interests of the Jewish people as a whole in Israel, where Orthodox Judaism enjoys a privileged, established status, and where the ceaseless hatred of the Jewish state on the part of much of the Arab world has taken some toll on the resiliency and compassion of Israelis; but there are examples of religious extremism in America, as well. The recent scandals involving the kosher slaughter industry in Postville, Iowa, for example, revealed a small group of Hasidic entrepreneurs who demonstrated only contempt for the laws of the democratic American state.

Nonetheless, the extremists in Judaism are a very small percentage of traditional Judaism. In Israel, the “national-religious (dati-mamlakhti)” group differs from the “fervently Orthodox (charedi)” group in that the former strives to build up Israeli society by productive work and that its members serve in the Israel Defense Forces or other national service platforms. The large majority of religiously- traditional Jews in Israel fully participate in democratic life, vote in elections, serve in the Knesset, and accept the results of elections.

Moreover, in the Diaspora, there is a long tradition of Judaism reconciling itself to the law of the land. As early as the 3rd century, C.E., the Babylonian Rabbi Samuel enunciated the principle, “dina de-malkhuta dina”, meaning “the law of the land is the law.” This held true even in pre-modern times, and in the past two centuries, with Jews enjoying citizenship in the nation-states of the West, there is an ample development of Jewish political theory that emphasizes the compromises necessary for Jews to live, as Jews, in a pluralistic society.

In Masorti/Conservative Judaism, there is a strong movement today to root out the basic attitudes that permitted the Postville scandal to exist. The “hekhser tzedek” program supplies the kosher certification for meat only when, in addition to the meat itself being correctly slaughtered, the relevant laws regulating employee conditions, as well as the treatment of animals, are scrupulously obeyed.

(2) The ideal Jewish polity was not a monarchy. The Ten Commandments open with God’s self-identification, “I am the LORD your God, Who brought you out from the land of Egypt, the house of slaves.” (Exodus 20:2) The core story of the Jewish religion is the journey from slavery to freedom and from subjugation to a human tyrant to a freely-chosen covenantal relationship with God. The basic theme of the Sinai covenant—the very heart of the Biblical meditation on Israelite history-- presuppose a people willingly obeying God’s laws, not coerced to serve any human tyrant.

The Bible clearly presents God as asking the Israelites if they will enter into a social contract, not forcing them to follow Divine Law. In Exodus 19:8 and 24:3, the Bible portrays the people Israel as assenting to God’s covenant.

Monarchy arose in ancient Israel about two centuries after the settlement of the Israelite tribes in Canaan. It was a defensive measure, occasioned by the threat to the existence of the Israelites posed by the military aggression of the Philistines. (I Samuel 8) But, as presented by the Bible, the Israelite king was not above the law. He was limited in his executive ability by several specific restraints, as well as by the general obligation to adhere to the religious laws undergirding biblical society. As expressed in the Bible:

He [the Israelite king] shall not get himself many horses,

and he shall not bring the people back to Egypt in order

to get many horses, when the LORD has said to you,

“You shall not go back this way again.” And he shall not

get himself many wives, so his heart will not turn away.

And he shall not get himself very much silver and gold.

And it will be, when he sits on his kingdom’s throne, that

he shall write himself a copy of this instruction on a scroll

in front of the Levite priests. And it shall be with him, and

he shall read it all the days of his life… so that his heart

will not be elevated above his brothers, and so he will not

turn from the commandments , right or left… (Deut. 17:16-20)

The monarchy died out with the Babylonian Exile, 2,600 years ago. When Jews returned to Zion, their leaders were priestly. Later on, rabbis served as spiritual mentors of the Jewish community.

In the Middle Ages, many Jewish communities developed democratic institutions of local self-government. Far from being a point of tension with Rabbinic Judaism, this development received the sanction of the leading Rabbis in the West. The reader is urged to consult the basic texts in Louis Finkelstein, Jewish Self-Government in the Middle Ages, on this point.

In modern times, Judaism has thrived in the democratic milieu of the West. But it needs to be stated that democratic rule alone is insufficient; there also needs to be a commitment on the part of society to respect minority rights, and to create “a wall of separation” between religious and political structures of authority. The First Amendment of the American Bill of Rights has helped to guarantee a society in which Judaism not only flourishes, but also accentuates its own humane potential.

I would recommend that the State of Israel adopt the American standard and allow religion to flourish apart from state support. It would be a momentary economic dislocation, but quite healthy for the Jewish religion in the long run.

Question: I have two tattoos. I got them when I was younger (of course). I would like to do what I can to be forgiven by G-d for such a sin. Since I am not a practicing Jew (but deeply believe in my religion (sounds hypocritical) I do not know what it is that I can do. Remove them? There is no guarantee that they would be totally removed. I feel as if a tattoo is a worse sin than others. If you grew up eating bacon, you can stop. Guidance would be appreciated.

I have two tattoos. I got them when I was younger (of course). I would like to do what I can to be forgiven by G-d for such a sin. Being that I am not a practicing Jew (but deeply believe in my religion (sounds hypocritical) I do not know what it is that I can do. Remove them? Still there is no guarantee that they would be totally removed. I feel as if a tattoo is a worse sin than others. If you grew up eating bacon, you can stop. If you used to cut your hair short, you can grow it out. Guidance would be appreciated.

1. The Masorti/ Conservative stream of Judaism agrees with the questioner’s judgment that the two tattoos s/he has represent sinful behavior—assuming that the decision to have the tattoo was made voluntarily. The Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Rabbinical Assembly (the professional association of Masorti/ Conservative rabbis) adopted a responsum by Rabbi Alan B. Lucas on the subject in 1997:

Tattooing is an explicit prohibition from the Torah… While no sanctions are

imposed, the practice should continue to be discouraged as a violation of the

Torah… At all times a Jew should remember that we are created “In God’s

Image.” We are called upon to incorporate this understanding in all our decisions.

That decision is still the broad consensus of the movement today, despite the growing popularity of tattoos as a cosmetic adornment in secular American society.

2. On the other hand, from our perspective, we would seek to reassure the questioner that a tattoo is not a worse sin than most others. The questioner’s logic rests on the immutability of the tattoos, their continued visibility even when the person regrets that earlier action and wishes not to have them. However, the essence of teshuvah, repentance, is not the success in totally removing the tattoos, but rather the regret itself, coupled with the restitution of the damage caused, to the extent possible, the firm decision not to repeat the sinful behavior, and the successful avoidance of that behavior when faced with the temptation to relapse (Maimonides, Mishneh Torah (Code of Jewish Law), Laws of Repentance, 2:1). While the consequences of certain other sins are less visible than the tattoo, they are no less permanent. For example, a person guilty of a breach of faith with a spouse or a significant other can never undo the past, and will have to live with the damages caused by that sin, both intra-psychic and inter-personal, forever, even in the absence of visible scars. Nonetheless, Jewish tradition allows and encourages repentance to whatever extent attainable. One should never despair of the possibility and the transformative power of repentance.

Should the questioner seek to remove the tattoos? Removing them is an understandable act to undo the previous behavior. But since it is not necessary for divine forgiveness, as our tradition understands it, the questioner is encouraged to proceed without religious anxiety. It would be good to seek the unbiased opinion of professional medical practitioners regarding the likely efficacy and risks of such treatment. As dermatology and plastic surgery progress, the benefit may outweigh the risk in the future, if it does not at present. Nonetheless, if the best medical advice is that removal of the tattoos will not be successful, the questioner may still take many other steps to put the sin firmly in the past.

Therefore, the answer to the questioner’s desire to do whatever is possible to obtain divine forgiveness for having had the tattoos is to carry on in the exact, contrite spirit as is expressed in the question, to desist from further tattooing and to continue to grow in one’s life-long relationship with God’s teachings.

3. The questioner speaks of being a believing, although not a practicing, Jew. This subject is indeed worthy of further exploration, and the questioner is earnestly advised to find a rabbi with whom to discuss the possibilities of incorporating Jewish practice into his or her life. The details of such an exploration are necessarily individualistic, but it is important to stress that Jewish practices are not an “all or nothing proposition”. Incorporating some of the commandments into one’s life is already valuable. In the language of the Mishnah, the basic Jewish code of law:

Rabbi Hannaniah son of Akashiah says: The Holy One wished to

give merit to the people Israel, and therefore, gave them many

instructions and commandments… (Tractate Makkot, 3:16)

4. The visibility of the tattoo raises the subject of the social dimension of the sin. Will a tattooed individual be shunned by an observant community? In this author’s own experience in serving as a rabbi within Masorti/ Conservative congregations, I can assure the questioner that several individuals, bearing tattoos, some quite prominent, have found full and non-judgmental acceptance by their fellow congregants. Jews are strongly cautioned not to remind people of past sins, of which they have repented, and it is gratifying to see the rank and file of my congregations fulfilling that mitzvah admirably.

In conclusion, the questioner is to be commended for seeking to atone for past indiscretion and encouraged that the gates of repentance remain open to every sincere soul.

November 9, 2010, is the anniversary of Krystallnacht. How should we be continuing to remember the Holocaust today?

As the Holocaust recedes from immediate historical memory, the danger of a recrudescent anti-Semitism has grown greater, not smaller. A probable explanation of this sad fact is that the historic, prejudicial hatred of the Jew was thrown on the defensive in western society in the Second World War and the immediately thereafter, when the struggle against Nazism was fresh in memory. But that hatred had never lost its virulence, and has been able to thrive, now that the recollection of the evil of the Nazis is relegated to the historically educated subsection of society.

Adding to the danger is the frequent melding of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. By “anti-Zionism”, it should be understood that criticisms of the state of Israel that aim at delegitimizing it, at ending its existence as a Jewish state, go beyond the constructive role of political criticism and enter the realm of bigotry.

One of the most persistent themes within the presentation of anti-Zionist propaganda is “Holocaust inversion”, i.e. the charge that Israelis/Jews are today’s Nazis, so to speak, and that today’s Nazi victims are the Palestinians.

Another persistent theme is “Holocaust denial”, still prominently disseminated in the Arab world. The most egregious example today, but by no means the only one, is the Iranian leader Ahmadinejad.

Therefore, the goals of Holocaust remembrance today should be 1) confirming for a younger and historically myopic generation that the Holocaust did happen; and 2) alerting all people of good will that the forces that led to the first Holocaust are still a present danger in today’s world.

While Holocaust education is not tantamount to endorsing every particular decision of the changing governments of the state of Israel, it should include a principled defense of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.

QUESTION: Are some acts of kindness considered more important than others? There is so much need in this world - does Judaism prioritize some needs over others?

ANSWER: There are numerous statements within our Jewish tradition regarding priorities among the conflicting claims upon our kindness to which we respond. Some of the more familiar of these statements are the primacy of saving life, with its obvious extensions, such as the redemption of captives (whose lives would have been in danger), the imperative of turning to our brothers when they are needy, hungry, in need of shelter and clothing, the high value of facilitating the study of Torah, the defense of the Jewish community and promotion of Jewish welfare in the Land of Israel, and so on.

Some of our traditional sources reflect the conditions of their own day, and so we are justified in buffering those sources with our own contemporary analysis of the situations calling upon our philanthropy. For example, the rabbinic dictum that “the poor of your own city take precedence over the poor of another place” presupposes that the basic Jewish community structure is local, and that the Jews of a given region are competent to address their local needs. Since the mid-19th century, however, Jews have grown ever more proactive in addressing the needs of our co-religionists, worldwide. Moreover, there are Jews living in regions where Jewish life is so impoverished that there is no ethical way for Jews in another, more affluent part of the world, such as the United States, to ignore those needs. Our various Jewish federations’ allocations committees wrestle with these issues all the time, and typically, we divide our tzedakkah dollar among Israeli, world-wide, and local Jewish causes.

We ought to bear at least two other factors in mind, when we rank our priorities. One factor is our judgment concerning how much help a given cause will receive from others, if we ourselves do not prioritize it. There are, for example, many worthwhile, general, causes that ought to engage us, because Judaism has a universalistic side. We ought to do our part to save the whales, the rain forests, and so on. But we are also commanded to care for our own people, and it is legitimate to fear that, if Jews do not take the lead in caring for Jews, others will not fill the void. Therefore, it is not correct for Jews, a tiny minority of the world’s population, to assign the bulk of their charitable giving to causes where the large majority is also engaged.

Another factor is an assessment of the effect of our donation upon the recipients. Most of us would agree that giving five dollars to a habitual drunkard is less well spent than buying that man a sandwich, because the former gift is liable to abuse, i.e. being spent on his addiction. By extension, as seen from the perspective of Masorti Judaism, which is strongly Zionist, Israelis who evade their national service in the Israel Defense Forces are harming their community, and therefore we would sooner fund Israeli yeshivot which encourage their students to defend their fellow Israelis, than to fund institutions which abet draft-dodging.

Lastly, we should bear in mind the rabbinic distinction between tzedakkah and gemilut chasadim: the former involves monetary gifts, while the latter can be done by means of personal service as well as by money. We help to refine the character of the giver when we seek opportunities for gemilut chasadim, and do not confine ourselves to tzedakkah. Therefore, charities which promote volunteerism, such as homeless shelters that enlist the services of volunteers in fulfilling their social welfare mission, deserve a high priority, and we ought to support them both with our dollars and our investment of time and energy.

Except for some fringe elements among the ultra-Orthodox, there is a strong Zionist consensus among Jews.The challenge of the Holocaust caused former non- and anti-Zionists among the Jewish people to change their earlier opinion in favor of Zionism, and that remains the position of the overwhelming majority of Jews, across denominational lines.

In the early years of the independence of Israel, 1948-1967, two factors served to unify world Jewish opinion of the need to stand solidly behind Israel, politically and ecnomically: support for Israel in the face of the existential threat to Israel’s physical survival posed by Arab hostility, and appreciation for the enormous financial burdens undertaken by the Jewish state to gather in the millions of Jewish refugees from the Arab world and from post-Holocaust Europe.

Some disagreements within world Jewry about Israeli policies began to come to the surface in the post-1967 period.After Arab counties, meeting in Khartoum, September, 1967, rebuffed Israel’s attempt to give back the territories captured in The Six Day War in exchange for recognition and peace, Israeli settlement in the administered territories began to accelerate. The pace of that settlement picked up after the accession of Prime Minister Begin's government in 1977. Mirroring the increasingly acrimonious divide between liberals and conservatives in the United States, some American Jews criticized Israel’s settlement policies in the West Bank and Gaza, while others defended Israel’s policies as a repair of the geographical weakness inherent in the pre-1967 borders. Within that ongoing debate, Conservative/ Masorti Jews, in those years, expressed worry that the settlements would make an eventual “land for peace” exchange more costly and difficult.Nonetheless, those worries were secondary to the strongly cherished Zionism that had become a powerful part of post-Holocaust, post-1948 Jewish identity.

In the past quarter century, the continuing lack of a regional peace has polarized American Jewish opinion still further.Many American Jews have hardened in their attitudes, growing more skeptical of land trades for peace.This is especially the case in the past decade, after the PLO- organized “intifada” in response to Prime Minister Barak’s offers for territorial withdrawal at the 2000 Camp David peace summit, and again, with the Hamas employment of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 to use that land as a launching pad for missiles against southern Israel.On the other hand, some Jews fear that the demographic increases among the Palestinians, coupled with the nuclear ambitions of Iran, make a “two-state” solution, involving an Israeli withdrawal from much of its post-1967 settlements, ever more imperative.While it is easy to oversimplify, one can say that, in broad terms, the more politically and religiously liberal diasporic Jews are more critical of Israel’s caution in offering further concessions, while the more politically and religiously conservative among American Jews emphasize the dangers of unmatched concessions.Conservative/ Masorti Jews, self-identified as moderates, tend to split internally on this issue.

Apart from political differences of opinion, there are also intra-Jewish religious tensions that affect, if only secondarily, the relationship of Diaspora Jews to Israel. Repeatedly since 1970, Conservative/ Masorti Jews have experienced frustration with the Israeli governmental establishment of Orthodoxy as the state religion.In 1970, 1977, 1988 and 1997, as well as in the past decade, the government has entertained proposals to amend the fundamental Israeli Law of Return to discredit conversions to Judaism conducted by Conservative and other non-Orthodox rabbis.Currently, yet another round of this periodic irritant in Israel-Diaspora Jewish relations is unfolding.

Finally, the American Jewish concern with its own continuity sometimes leads diaspora Jews to urge that the support for Israel not be misconstrued as a panacea to reinforce a sense of Jewish identity in an age of assimilation.Calls for this reevaluation were especially prominent in the period right after the Oslo Peace Accord of 1993, when hopes for Mid-East peace ran high.With today’s greater pessimism about Israel’s likelihood of finding a respite from the hostility of its Arab neighbors, such calls to lower the role of Israel in American Jewish thinking have diminished.

Above all, it bears emphasis that the support for Israel on the part of American Jews has remained strong, despite stressors.

Question: Are Jews required to do anything special to "repair the world" after the gulf oil spill? Is there a Jewish perspective on how this tragic accident should impact our view on offshore oil drilling moving forward?

Question: Are Jews required to do anything special to "repair the world" after the gulf oil spill? Is there a Jewish perspective on how this tragic accident should impact our view on offshore oil drilling moving forward?

Judaism contains many teachings that promote ecological consciousness and a commitment to environmental stewardship. In the past forty years, with the rise of the secular environmentalist movement, many Jews, especially those in the Renewal, Reform, Reconstructionist and Conservative/Masorti groupings, have articulated the synthesis of Judaism and environmentalism.

Thus, we find that the dominant interpretation of the festival of “Tu Bi’shvat”, the “birthday of the trees”, has moved from the Zionist emphasis on land reclamation and reforestation in Israel to an environmentalist emphasis on saving the world’s rain forests, promoting the value of sustainability in our economic behavior, recycling, conserving, and reducing our carbon footprint so as to combat global warming with all of its grave consequences.

With respect to oil, there is an additional, political element. Jews have long championed the search for renewable energy sources as an alternative to oil, because the world’s thirst for oil accords enormous political significance to the Arab countries that control a large fraction of the world supply of that fuel source. Here, the Jewish commitment to the safety and security of the State of Israel combines with environmental priorities to lead Jews to lobby for alternatives to additional oil drilling.

The recent Gulf of Mexico disaster has only intensified these considerations. In keeping with environmentalist thinking, many Jews argue that the increasingly desperate search for oil is condemning future generations to an ever-more inhospitable climate and to all the human and ecological disasters that will ensue. Zionists argue that the focus spent on finding the dwindling reserves of oil—which at best, will fuel our economies for a limited period of time-- would be far better spent on the research and development to bring non-polluting, non-global warming sources of energy to market: geo-thermal, solar, wind, and wave sources.

From a biblical perspective, we see the mandate to preserve the environment in the charge given by God to the first human, to “till and tend” the Garden of Eden. Many Jews argue that, in our success at tilling, i.e. working, the world, we have overlooked the mitzvah of tending, i.e. preserving, our natural home.

May a Jew that went through a Reform Conversion move to Israel under the law of return?

Speaking from a Conservative/Masorti Jewish perspective, I would initially delineate two issues, one posed explicitly, and the other one implicitly, in this question:

1.Is a conversion to Judaism conducted under Reform auspices recognized in Israel?

2.Is there a Conservative/MasortiJewish approach to Reform conversions, independent of the official Israeli political stance?

RESPONSE:

1.The Israeli Law of Return, a basic part of the law operative in the State of Israel, provides for Jews to move to Israel and claim citizenship immediately.Since this law covers converts to Judaism, and since the Orthodox in Israel (as elsewhere) do not accept the legitimacy of non-Orthodox conversions, there have been numerous, Orthodox-inspired attempts since the 1970’s to amend the Law of Return so as to restrict the applicability of the Law of Return to native-born Jews and to those converted under Orthodox auspices.While the legislative and political history of these attempts is complicated, the basic situation today is that, for purposes of citizenship, Israel still accepts non-Orthodox conversion as competent to enable the immigrant to invoke the Law of Return.However, the Rabbinic courts, authorized in Israel to handle issues such as marriage, refuse to treat such citizens as Jewish.

Responding to that state of affairs from a Masorti/Conservative viewpoint:I lament the politicization of the “Who is a Jew” question in Israel.It has brought out so much that is negative, and even brought people into the category of violating the prohibition against “sin’at chinam”, “Causeless hatred”.That prohibition is such a key component of the Jewish values structure that the Rabbis have identified it as the reason why the Second Temple was destroyed. It stands as a cautionary teaching for all who cherish the State of Israel today.

The basic problem stems from the delineation of Orthodox Judaism as the “established synagogue” of the State of Israel.The separation of “Church and State”, or more correctly, “Synagogue and State”, in Israel, would not only end the gross offenses against Jewish unity that now receive state sanction.Such a separation would also be good for the cause of Judaism.Removed from the power political mindset fostered by its connection with governmental power, the Orthodox movement would adopt the non-coercive outreach programs now practiced by the Reform/Progressive and Masorti/Conservative streams in Israel.That would be likely to bring more secular Israelis under the beneficial influence of Jewish tradition, while keeping Judaism the religion of a people rather than a sect.

2.The Conservative position on conversion to Judaism differs from some, although not all, Reform practice, in that not all Reform rabbis insist on the ceremonies of immersion in a mikveh (i.e. tevilah) for both male and female converts, and circumcision (milah) for male candidates.For Conservative Judaism, these are official standards of practice, and may not be waived.When a person, having been converted under Reform auspices, approaches a Conservative/Masorti rabbi, there is no automatic rejection of the conversion based on its having been supervised by a Reform leader.If the conversion had not included the ceremonies of immersion and, for males, circumcision (or symbolic circumcision, if the male had previously been circumcised in a purely surgical context), then the Conservative/Masortirabbi is likely to invite the convert to “complete the conversion process” by observing those ceremonies.

THE VIEWS EXPRESSED IN ANSWERS PROVIDED HEREIN ARE THOSE OF THE INDIVIDUAL JVO PANEL MEMBERS, AND DO NOT
NECESSARILY REFLECT OR REPRESENT THE VIEWS OF THE ORTHODOX, CONSERVATIVE OR REFORM MOVEMENTS, RESPECTIVELY.